You can read it at an time, but you will end up doing a lot of back and forth swapping of incidental parts to do it. Just wait until you swap heads then you can only do it once and make the necessary adjustments as needed.
Yeah, that was my thought. If I gotta swap out springs, that's a lot tougher with the head on. And putting a degree wheel on it will require taking other parts off too. Just easier to do all at once with the top end swap. I'll also be able to inspect the original head gasket at that time and see how thick it is from the factory, and the deck clearance on the pistons too.
The bottom end is pretty solid and low mileage, and I'm on a shoestring budget. So I'm not touching the pistons, zero deck and rebuilding the short block until I have to.
