It's not hard to straighten it yourself. I made a 9"x48" straight edge out of 1/8 steel one side has the center housing area cut out the other is straight for holding against the bolt surface. There is how to youtube videos on this. Yes a simple straight edge will give you thousands of trouble free miles. Only need the bar thru center and bushings if your building a housing from scratch. All housing from back in the day are bent especially trucks, and I've seen them go thousands of miles being bent. Roads were a lot worse back then. Mike

In 1983 at 12am, leaving a second job at Randy's Ford Specialties working for boss 302 parts, i'm jumping on 270 heading home and a 260Z racing up on my mustang and thought he was going to get around me so i mashed it. Was pulling away from him and at about 90mph she started slowing down. No real commotion just dying off gently. By the time i made it to the next exit I was at 15mph begging to make it up the ramp. Pulled into the lights at a self serve station and had hood up checking everything, got fuel, pulled the cap and rotor checking points. All good there, put rotor back on and turned it 90 deg??? Pulled the dizzy and sure enough I sheared the roll pin and gear was slowly spinning on the shaft taking it out of time. Dug around in the bottom of the toolbox I found a nail that was a near perfect fit. Stuck it in and bent it around, pulled number 1 and stabbed it, tune by ear and ran another 10 miles down the hwy to home. Pulled in at 2am and back out the door at 6am again for the real job at supreme grinding and was feeling rough. Fun times had by all.   Mike
                                                                                                                                                     

Guess I could have gave more detail.
You need to be pushing mid to upper hundreds in microns. Pick up screens are large debris filter screens only. Screw on filters are like 20 microns I think. 500 micron is 0.0196 in thousands. I talk to them and think I got around 750 screen or so. I wanted it to flow and low drag on components. To small is hard on dizzy gears and roll pins. HAHA I personally was not worried about being to big in my drag car, if the engine started to come apart there was bigger problems and the pick up screen was useless anyway. I always cut my wix filters open to see bearing life back then. Mike

Love the idea of the more stock appearing tunnel port with new technology, with a slightly raised exhaust port (exhaust is a big killer in fe's) would open more doors for show/street/strip people. I would be up for that.

I also believe the cam is not a good match and needing a little less duration @ .050 with more split keeping more air/fuel mix in the cylinder to make power. Flow should not be a problem at all. 13-1 static compression and thinking the dynamic compression is way lower due to mix bleeding back out valves. Yes it is a guess with out knowing the actual degreed timing events but can explain why it liked the new headers so much by them helping to get air/fuel back in the cylinder. A full 10 hp difference from your regular dyno headers that your 585ci drag week engine ran on? Your work is outstanding!!! One sure fire way to know is to pull a jon kaase if you can find a finger to sacrifice. LOL I always laugh at that cuz it looks like something in a cartoon but proves a good point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Iq1B-2paCs

Ya really nice stuff there that I also kinda hate to see. If you really think about it we are a dying bred. My grandson would like to buy something to have a project to learn, gain experience's from and enjoy just like we did. Now people think there junk is priceless. Teens don't make that much money. It's 10k for something decent enough to even start with then a full restoration. Go by your high school and look at the cars, I remember primmer and mags. LOL
Not a big fan of whats happening in the auto world today. Remember the days of racing, drag, stock car? They were real cars and people we celebrate about because it's all corporations now and little to over the top crazy for me, and getting worse. What will we see in 10 more years? They are already driving for us now. Oops turn into a rant, just saying.

Great to have you here.
I've built and worked on alot of rides and that's a tough question. LOL it really is, sounds like your off to a good start. To find the best answer you need to start with,
First: What really is your honest intentions with your ride. Street, Street/strip, road course or all out hard racing. Without us knowing that in some depth no one can tell you whats best to do with what you have, or open opinions also can be called to many cooks in the kitchen and different brain waves will just throw you off track of your goals.
Second: You have talked to Bret in depth apparently so he knows and understands whats needed and would never steer anyone wrong. He's one of the top of the shrinking number of fe builders.
Third: Write down on paper if need be with a game plan and don't steer off coarse of it. YES in asking for advice and how-to's and be very specific. There's so many knowledgeable people here that live and breathe fe and will very happy to help. That's whats great about this site over others.
Forth: You will enjoy your finished product or ride. Hard work pays.

That's what I learned after flip flopping around my first build 30 years ago and the best answer i got for now.  Mike