I suggest getting the heads pressure checked and magna fluxed and fix any problems. Supposedly the 6.9 rockers suck but a lot of people have left them alone. I'm not sure the later valve seals are an "upgrade" they tend to let a lot less oil sneak buy in good condition but that means the valve stem may get less lubrication. Personally I'd rather she used some oil than to have to worry about the seemingly increased incidence of dropped valves in your 7.3s. Most important to your success is going to be that you carefully follow the reverse torque and line sequence very slowly until all the pressure is off the bolts. Failure to do so is why many people warp or crack these heads. The second area of concern is the mating surface. If you hot tank/pressure check, magnaflux the heads more than likely the machine shop will clean them right up for you, but you must make sure they did and also you have to get the bloc mating surfaces spotlessly clean, I mean like you'd want to eat off of it clean. The other thing to consider is that you should never allow your heads to be milled outside of the service limit. It's not very much either, I don't know that number off the top of my noodle. Now if they need a ton of milling to be flat you should just buy a new set of offshore castings like Icanfixall did if that's not in the budget or if your heads are good, you don't need to even think about that and there are other ways to make it work, some suboptimal but you only have so much cash. Those heads are usually pretty salvageable unless someone has severely overheated the motor or a well meaning but uninformed machinist mills them out of spec so pick a good shop even if it costs, and insist on what YOU want done to them. The ARP studs are great especially for high boost apps, BUT you must explicitly follow ARP's lubing and torquing instructions. It seems lame and like a waste of time but with all the work you're doing do you want to take a chance....really what is a few more hours...you'll see what I mean. Along the smae lines, your torque wrench better be very close to spot on accurate or else problems could ensue. Calibrating your torque wrench might not be a bad idea. I have seen people blow head gaskets here from a torque wrench that wasn't giving proper readings, good home mechanics too.... a real crying shame.
