I noticed some scores on the outer face of the head, right near the cam gears on both the intake and exhaust faces. There's also a small horizontal line on the intake cam bearing surfaces. I didn't see any shavings or anything like that. Not sure how this happened but I was damn careful so I'm pretty sure it wasn't caused by me. This engine was purchased from a wrecker so I don't really know the history of it. I'm assuming I should scrap this head and locate something else.

I haven't measured the lobes for tolerance yet but will be doing that soon.

The head is going onto a block with a stock bottom end, gonna see approx 7psi. I just planned on replacing the head components with stock counterparts and using this as my MS guinea pig.

Any thoughts on what would cause this?

PICS:
http://www.codeafx.com/turbo/

who beat that thing with a hammer? the first three pics are pretty scary. I couldn't see much on the last 3 that cought my attention

Looks like someone was trying to hammer the cam seals out with a screwdriver. Ouch.

Those particular journals sit right on the cam seal area, so its really easy to end up with dirt in them in the event the seal begins to fail. usually, unless there is deep scoring there and evidence of contamination in several other journals, I'd ignore it, but those are ugly.

thanks for the replies. I'll be inspecting the head with a magnifying glass for other signs of damage before moving ahead and planing the gasket surface.