Cleaning was a success! Had some friends over to help/laugh at me, and eat tacos, drink beer.
Pretty straight forward job, took a few hours, but could have been shorter had I not installed the intake cam caps backwards. No big deal.
Started it up and it was a hellacious noise as the HLAs filled up. I was sure to point the HLA holes towards the tiny galleys in the bores on the head. I had one stubborn one, but I went for a drive and by the time I reached 2 miles, it was fine. I drove the car hard to heat up the oil, parked it to see if the HLAs would drain out and return to their ticking, but they didn't. I can feel the extra power of having the HLAs fully operational. There were 2 or 3 that were pretty soft. All is well.