Update:

Winter can suck my balls.

The block and shortblock parts have been at the shop for two weeks now.  They had some other jobs to finish up and were going to be starting on mine shortly.  Awaiting torque plate hone, cleanup cut on the deck surfaces, balance of rotating assy, and align hone of the mains if it needs it.  I hope to have that back in a week or two's time.

New parts arrived this week:

Improved racing oil pan baffle.  Figured it'd be a good insurance feature for keeping oil in the pickup tube area with the higher flow-rate of my ported pump and with the high cornering forces this car will (hopefully) be seeing at the track someday.

The hinged doors use centripetal force to their advantage.  In engineering this design concept is known as a "self-help" mechanism.  In a turn, the oil forces the "outside" door closed while simultaneously opening the "inside" door.  Because of the this the oil is in effect trapped in the pickup tube area.

Cometic MLS 0.040" head gaskets

Cloyes Hex-a-just adjustable timing set.  Again, one of those things I figured wouldn't be a bad idea.  I ended up changing my cam selection so wanted to have the tuning flexibility an adjustable set offers.  Several things that's nice about this set:

1)  It's made in 'murca.
2)  The adjustment mechanism is on the cam gear, infinite increment from +6 to -6 degrees.  No taking the chain off to make adjustments.
3)  The gears themselves are oversized to help take up chain slack.
4)  It's a single roller so I don't have to fuck with oil  pump shimming and timing cover clearance issues.
5)  A torrington thrust bearing is included to take up the slop between the cam retainer plate and backside of the gear.  Prevents rubbing / wear between the two caused by excessive camshaft endplay.
6)  It's made in 'murca.
7)  Yuengling is good.

Tick Performance Street Heat Stage 2 cam. 

Grind specs:

 Should provide me with a fat torque curve and good midrange power.

Also picked up some 3.2 M3 half shafts early in the week locally from another bimmerforums member.  Started tearing them down for CV boot replacement, cleaning, and fresh repack with redline CV-2-AWESOME.

Anyone who says you can't take the outer CV joints apart on these is full of shit.

Both outer CV joint housings were damaged, though.  Would never have known this if I hadn't torn it all down.  Same goes for the seller, can't really blame him because unless he had torn them apart there's no way he would have known either.  Still trying to decide what I want to do about this.  Potentially bad news bears if the cracks propagate the whole way to the edge.  At which point the retainers fail, the bearing can pull out of the housing, and the whole joint will either seize or snap the shaft.

I'm not sure what alloy this is.  It is highly magnetic, but doesn't look galvanized or to be regular mild steel.  Maybe 400 series stainless?  In which case I would need a tig to weld it with any kind of confidence.

Several options:

• Figure out what alloy it is and weld it up, reinstall it and hammer the crimp back down.
• Cut out the cracked areas with a dremel and deburr to remove the stress riser.  Reinstall as per above.
• Make new housings out of sheet metal or carbon fiber, redesign to be easily removable to improve the serviceability of the outer joints.  Personally leaning towards this idea at present, because I can see the need for it.  I've already rebuilt my stock halfshafts twice and the car doesn't put down even half the power that it will be.  

Problem with the last one - no idea how I'd make it.  I suppose a pos/neg mold for use with carbon fiber layup would be relatively straightforward with some thought.  Making this out of sheet metal would require a press and some sort of stamping die (which I do not have).

More to come.