Deshrouding is removing material around the valve seat to flow better. Not much to do in vtak heads.
As I mentioned, the rods are a hair too big. It would be all of $50 at most machine shops to grind the rods down, or you could grind the pistons a tad. They never really touch each other, so the surfaces just have to be somewhat flat. If they do touch, your thrust bearings are gone.
I'm going to get a cross-slide vice for my cheap drill press and use an endmill to shave a sliver of material each pass. I already have a motorized setup in mind. Otherwise it will just me move & plunge, move & plunge.
I'm gonna go with the gsr pistons and see how it works out. My main constraint is the timeline-- I'll only be home for 3 weeks max and its around xmas so its hard to know. I've been trying to get all the parts together that I'll need but since the swap is at home and I'm away, its hard to know what I'm missing. If I run out of time for machining shit or whatever, I can just go with the ls pistons and resell the gsr's.
Rough timeline as it is:
1st week:
Get home, look over everything for anything that could be missing, and order immediately
Swap the pedal set (also an auto to manual conversion) and pick up missing parts and piddle shit like oil, tranny oil, spark plugs, gaskets, etc
Engine rebuild, piece everything together for the swap
Following weekend:
1 day of pulling engine, and auto-manual completion,
and 2nd day new engine in, break in engine, burnouts, drunken videos,
Mad hosspowaz.
Skipping the part where everything goes wrong and I'm missing a hundred vital pieces, the engine eats itself when turned over, the tranny is fucked, friend doesn't show up with welder, and I choke my baby's momma to death and end up in jail.