I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this.

For giggles, I laid short lengths of plastigage on each quadrant of my cylinders, and torqued down the heads. On removal, I was able to verify a good seal all the way around the head to cylinder sealing surface by way of measuring the width of the plastigage. Of course I did this after I had verified that the heads were level and of equal height to begin with.

Here's a couple of pictures. Not great, but you get the idea.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

But are the cylinders square to the case??

I don't have a clear monitor at the moment, but is that right chamber cracked??
Did you do this plastigage test with light load or full head torque values?

Yes, the cylinders are square to the case. Bolted down without the heads I had less than .001 clearance using a straight edge across both cylinders.

I fully torqued the heads (23 lb ft) with the plastigage in place just to see what would happen and it compressed equally in each quadrant on both cylinders. I don't know if anyone has ever tried this approach before, but thought it was potentially another way to verify that the head to cylinder clearance is consistent.

No crack in the heads as far as I can tell. Fat Performance did the valve job on the heads so I'm confident that they are good.

What kind of intake valves are you using, what kind of heads were the cores?

They are 2.0 3 bolt heads for sure...chamber, angle of plug holes.

That must be a 1.7 case to be that square without being decked.
That sure looked like a crack at the 3 o clock position of the spark plug hole.. Thats a common crack area, too.