Here's the latest on engine #1. I was out in the garage and just started taking things off it. I wanted to check out the condition of things and mostly because taking things apart is cool. You can get a much better view at the insides with the exhaust manifold off I found. Things are still looking promising. When I took off the intake manifold I got a couple suprises. The gasket that was there has kind of fallin' apart and gotten pretty gross around the intakes. The rubber seals had fallin' apart and it looks like this area of the engine needs some up keep.

When putting an old engine back in to use, are there some important things to look at or will trying to start it pretty much answer all the questions. The reason I ask is I can tell I'm going to need some new gaskets in order to make this work. I would hate to buy a complete gasket set for the whole engine just to find out this thing is junk. Should I just go for the gaskets that I can visually tell need help and leave the insides alone at this point?

Thanks for the advice racing super folk!