as to how to check intake fitment, hughes has a tech article on how to check the intake that may be a better way than how you have checked yours.
the link is over on the Q&A board under an intake leak thread. hughes lists it under "intake manifold sealing".
i don't know how to jump over there while typing this, and copy the link. sorry.
also, i'm not trying to bash the way you checked, or insult you in any way, rather just adding another way to check your intake fitment.
I appreciate the feedback. I actually bought the wax wire and .065" ground washers from Hughes. The angles of the manifold face to head face are within specs according to the result from that Hughes technique. The problem with my intake is the ports themselves were up much higher than the port openings on the heads. In order to move the manifold and ports down towards the ports on the heads, I have to narrow the intake while maintaining the correct angle. By narrowing the intake, the ports sit lower and line up correctly.
The only other alternative would have been to weld and reposition the ports on the intake, which didn't make much sense when a simple milling operation would result in better port alignment. The way it was positioned, the floor of the manifold port was almost 1/4" higher than the head's port. The same thing with the roof of the port, which would have had to be welded up in order to fill the gap. The intake ports have been massaged and flow 345cfm at .600" lift according to Dwayne Porter, so they are nicely done for a non-Max Wedge port.
I'll post more pictures as I make progress on this conversion.
