Well the time has come. My air injection rail developed several cracks and caused my motor to run lean; ended up dropping an exhaust valve on cylinder one.
I've ordered a rebuilt head from rock auto, comp 260h cam kit with lifters and timing gears, ripped out the smog pump and associated parts, ripped out the egr and associated parts, and capped off all vacuum connections. I also ordered the tweecer tuning unit to disable the egr and smog programming out of the ECU. All of this going on my 96 maf 4.9 truck.
Right now everything is torn down as it needs to be, just waiting on parts to reassemble. Here are some pics:

 

More pics


Pulling crank gear



Old head and cam.



I like this look

 

Can't wait to see the end result.

 

Eliminating EGR does what for you?

 

Managed to get the crank gear pressed on. Still waiting on the camshaft retaining plate and the timing cover gasket to come in the mail before I install the cam. Managed to paint the intake manifold and some other parts.

 

Most importantly, it makes removing and installing the upper intake manifold much easier. The egr tube passes right between the intake runners and makes it difficult to fully remove the upper intake to access the valve cover. The egr tube had to be removed anyways, and since I have a tweecer I can tune the egr out of the conputer, so no need to reinstall the egr.

 

New cam and lifters installed with new timing gears.

 

Looking good!

 

Fresh head with new valve stem seals, springs, locks, and retainers.



Time for some paint!



Used the old spark plugs to seal the threads.


I just love me this Ford Blue

 

Nice job. I never have been able to figure out why the only cross-flow head for these engines is a race only with no coolant.