OK... carbon scraped from the pistons - check. Last weekend I used my new "thread chasing set" and chased all the head bolt threads in the deck and a few others that are exposed on the engine. Ran the gasket scraper over the deck surface as well. Getting things ready for installing the heads.

Cleaned up the cylinder walls and valley with lint free non shedding rags and some oil. Went down each cylinder a few times as I rotated the engine 1/4 turn at a time to bring the pistons to the top in order to clear the carbon off the top of the pistons. The cylinder walls and inside of this engine are really clean considering it was built in 2001 and has been in the car since. Not a lot of miles in that time though, longest single trip was from Austin to Dallas. Maybe 1000 miles per year tops from 2001 to about 2008, none since.

Built a holder for my lifters and removed them. Found about ten quart containers of oil in various grades that I do not use anymore, some has been sitting on the shelf 8-10 years. Drained the pan and let it drip for an hour or so at dinner time. Installed my new dipstick tube. Put the drain plug back in and added seven quarts to my seven quart pan. Calibrated my new dipstick - it comes extra long and you cut it to length. Now I need to find a suitable plug for the hole where the factory dipstick goes into the block. Drained the "fresh" oil.

The new dipstick is flexible so it can go around headers, has a pivoting attachment ear to mount on a header bolt, and it uses a quick disconnect style collar to lock it into place when it is seated. I like it overall, though they could have made the gauge section flat and thus made it easier to read. Reading a dipstick with fresh clean oil is a little difficult.​

Painted the oil pan yesterday - black engine enamel. Cleaned outside of block, chased all the oil pan bolt holes, one of them was a little cross threaded on the timing cover, so that was repaired.​

Removed the old balancer. That took almost an hour alternating between the 1/2" impact gun and the 3 pound slide hammer. When it finally broke free I heard a little snap, I thought I had broken the puller. I remember it being a little tight going on, but wow, never had one put up that much fight before. I was contemplating warming up the torch for a bit there, but did not really want to go there if I did not need to.

I checked the height of the oil pump pickup, it has a full 1/4" clearance to the bottom of the pan. I installed the pan with a new style nylon windage tray that has the built in raised silicon beads on both sides and the steel compression sleeves. http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS-Performance-Products/555/502000/10002/-1?parentProductId=1660861

I cleaned the block and head mating surfaces and installed the new head gaskets. Alec got in on the action and torqued down the head bolts on one side... it looked so much easier when dad was doing it! We counted to 17 in three languages... 17 head bolts per side, torque in 3 steps per the ARP instructions... re-check torque at each step, 17... 17... 17... seventeen... diecisiete... ju nana...

I painted the engine and called it a night. Took some pictures.​