For those with some experience with the stage vi heads, where to you make the relief in the pocket? Per the picture 1 or 2, or 1 and 2?

On the first set of Stage VI's i modified the outsides of the pockets simular to the ones in this pic

That looks good...Do you get better drainback? Do you also modify the spring cups any?

If you are talking about trying to get the oil out of the spring seats, I took a die grinder and ground out wherever I could to try and route the oil back into the lifter gallery.Unlike stock iron heads or Indy-1 heads where the oil will run back into the lifter area the VI heads are a pain in the azz. Even with all the grinding the raised intake ports are so high lots of oil will still run over the valve cover rails onto your HOT headers if you remove you valve covers because the oil has to go up hill to get into the lifter gallery.

When I have read about others making the modification, I always envisioned a notch just to keep oil from building up.

Any others?

Yes , that looks good. Thats were I modified mine also. No problems with oil pooling around the seal. I use blue PC viton seals with good luck.....Matt

Just for kicks, I put the intake on the heads (off the engine) and put fluid into the spring pockets to see the route the fluid would take. The fluid will spill over toward the rail out of the valve spring pocket before it gets to the bottom of the guide. as mentioned by hank, the transitition back into the lifter galley is higher than the valve cover rail, thus the oil has to get up on the valve cover before it can make its way back into the galley. It seems also that the bottom of the guide and the transitition back into the galley are the same height. This would seem to suggest that the cuts between the valve spring pockets would not have an impact since the oil will build up on the both sides equally.

I run Stage -6 heads and I did`nt do anything to the pockets.
However I did make external drainbacks to the back of the block.so when I pull the valve covers the oil in the back corner is gone.
Works for me.

I just put knotches in mine to clear the oil out of the pockets but when you pull the valve covers it runs directly out the back corners onto the valve covers. It sucks!!

Any pictures of your drain back? I would be interested in a more detailed description of what you did?

Me too.

Me to!

Ok ,I`see if I have a picture.

Mine just have the channel cut between the adjoining pockets so that the seals aren't constantly flooded. But there's always a lot of oil hanging out around the gasket area when I pull the valve covers.

those cast in valve seat cups look plain scary