rustbucket a couple of questions.
What did you end up buying and the cost of the bare heads?
What did you pay to have the machine work done to just stock form out of the box Stealth head.
Cost of the valves?
Cost of the springs-retainers - locks- cups

I gess my point is that you said that you didn't need to buy parts that you would not use.Well even if you throw the springs out and all the retainers and locks your still ahead of the game by buying Stealth heads at $950.

Motors are not rocket science and most of us farmers do not need to tweek every little part to get that .00001 more ET.I look at it this way. If I buy a Honda car you will not see me tearing it apart just to make sure the the guy that assembled it did his job right.I personaly think that most aftermarket parts would work fine for 70% of the guys that are building a healthy motor without tweeking.We read on here where a guy that has a nine second car and he tweeked the heads and change this and that and all of the sudden we need to do that to our 13 second car.
I find that the differance between my slow 10.6 car and his 9 second car is thousands of dollars.When I line up to race him there is no differance.