I think a little blot of RTV on the rivet tails inside the valve cover would be unlikely to do any harm. It'll probably stay put but if a little ball of it should break off it's going to slide down the pushrod tube into the sump and either lie there on the bottom or get caught in the screen.
Now, if you gunk up the flange on your oil pump and just smoosh it all together...well, I'd refrain from that.
Working on my "For Sale" photo/vid portfolio. I'm going to copy a few fairly excellent and well-known (at least among 550 obsessives) pictures, starting with the glamour shots of 550-0051.
Real deal:
Eddie Special:
Real:
Wrongness:
This shoot was spur-of-the-moment when I stopped by the neighbor's house and he happened to be heading up to the airfield to check on his plane. I do plan to re-shoot more carefully with a clean car and the proper "FAU X 6H" marker tag.
Car ran nice on the way up but of course now the Accusump fitting is dripping and also it developed a miss on the way home—probably an idle jet.
Ed, notes from a former photog:
The originals were shot from farther away with a longer lens. This softens the foreground and background and makes the car 'pop' more.
Also, if you've got any control over the aperture (f stop) on the camera you're using, open that up as far as you can (smaller f-number), for the same reason.
Otherwise, that looks like a great location for nice, clean backgrounds.
Finally, very late or very early light adds a bit more drama - not that the car needs that, really.
Now were talking about F-stops, not Brake stops 
Well we all have our aperature priorities.
Very nice, Ed.
Thanks, Mitch. Yup. Next time I'll run early morning, back off 8-10 feet and telephoto to about 120-150mm. I'll see about opening the aperture on my iphone...
Also: The car should not be perpendicular to the the runway. I see now that the rear needs to be clocked toward the photographer about 10-15 degrees, the shot taken from roughly in line with the front of the rear tire. And a smidge lower.
I'll get the other one a little better too. Next time.
I'd say 200 to 400mm is a better place to be for focal-length.
Now, if you could get someone to fly a plane (preferably a commercial jet, but one of those in the background would do) and taking off directly at and over you....THAT would be Bitchin'! 
Of course, today, you can do a lot of that in 'post':
I do sometimes miss my full (cracked) versions of Photoshop and QuarkXpress from 25 years ago.
I bet you could get Cory over to do a full photo shoot of that car and make it a star.
It would deserve "Star Treatment", after all.
Actually, I miss all the applications that are now going to yearly liscences. Talk about a business model that takes away from the individual.
I mean, I have used PC's but mostly Macs for a long time and their strengths were beyond what PC could do at the time. We developped a huge business application on Helix that was 10 years beyond the market. Even so, Many Many programs that I use to use on different early OS's kept working and working. An example, Daylite a very excellent CRM went yearly fees and they declared to us that they would provide a legacy non supported version, but then they actually sabotaged the program so that it would no longer work or rather stop working with Catalina.
It could work it just would no longer install and no matter what I did on the purchase of new hardware the program and 7000 contacts was toast. It used to allow import of all emails, coming or going into the database... What a easy way to keep all the client's communication in one place.
The CEO, took his name off being able to receive Tweets and/or emails. Nice guy.
Another great outliner was MORE 3.1 that Symantec tanked when word became king, but More did more than anything for the general users.
Try to find a simple drawing program for drafting purposes.
In any case this big brother liscence is not my favourite.
Yep. All software is like this. I remember well getting adept at a version of Excel & Access and writing a bunch of macros in the mid 90s only to have the new Excel be completely incompatible. Then I taught myself some Visual Basic (can't even remember why) but that became obsolete like immediately.
It was like pointlessness was the point.
After developing and retiring many software programs for clinical care in hospitals, I have become very fond of Google apps and open software...
There are some things that open software is good for but in my opinion, nothing beats a good relational database that is continually modified to maximize the efficiency of a business process, be that medical, para medical but in fact pretty much any business process. Of course the process of developping such a tool is an art, and as many user interfaces are often developped with issues thatmake the end user babysit the terminal most times rather than it being a tool it hinders the process. I mean if you have to have paper beside your terminal for what it won't do then the process software is lacking.
A few words in defense of subscription-based software and, in my case, Adobe (words I never thought I'd ever be thinking, let alone writing).
(And apologies to Ed, as this has nothing to do with a Thunder Ranch build.)
When I got the e-mail a few years back about MY Photoshop going away to be unavoidably replaced by an unending stream of monthly payments, I was as indignant (the polite form of 'pissed off' ) as everyone else.
Beyond indignant, I was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it anymore. Except that I soon realized (also, like everyone else) that not taking it anymore would mean no Photoshop, and in my chosen profession, that would have been self-defeating. Adobe had us by the pixels.
So, I relented (also, like everyone else) and started watching monthly dings against my credit card.
Nine dollars and ninety-nine cents per month, every month.
Which, it turned out, was less painful than the $300 or $400 or $600 per incident that popped up unexpectedly every four or five years when I suddenly realized that, oh crap, Photoshop doesn't launch anymore after I just upgraded the OS which I've been putting off doing for a year but now have to do because this website I need freezes every time I go there.
Life, in this digital age, had become complicated.
As it turns out, the monthly payments add up to about what I used to pay, maybe less, and now I don't have to worry about having the current versions of six other pieces of software because it all happens automatically, while I sleep, thanks to the boffins at Adobe and their little bots.
I think it's like carburetors and fuel injection. You don't want to admit that some smug little black box is smarter and more talented than you.
But it is.
In your case your cost came out to be nearly the same cost but in my case the price went from $250 USA every 4 years to $250 per year, now if I had a business use, sure, but for a non business user and for mostly personal use now, it seems a bit much. I do understand where their market is going but to disable a previously paid user who has a liscence to use it as long as you want, I was yes indignant and Thanks Ed for letting us digress on your blue thread.
Adobe has me thinking about starting to charge the guy that bought my last car a monthly fee. I mean, it's been 6 years. Surely he can't expect to keep driving it for free....
Good one Mike, your still up
Hawaii time... It's only 7:28 pm here
I had to drop off one of our cars to our mechanic so I was late getting home with my son then I tried doing a backup of my laptop and voila I had to run a disk repair... so I am still up at 1:30... but it is a.m.
Wow, you're in tomorrow. So what's the future like? Does 2020 get any better 😃
Nah, here you still have to wear a mask.
It would be nice to take a holiday to Disney to tomorrowland but we can't leave the country... The Crimeminister will not allow us to leave. Oh I better get to bed.
Mike, I'd let him drive it for as long as he wants.
Just make him pay to find out which idle jet is engraved with the wrong numbers.
Now that's truly devious. Good thinking?
@IaM-Ray posted:Nah, here you still have to wear a mask.
and a good thing too, when you look at the long term effects of the virus on people.
We might get into as covid do or do not discussion on the wrong thread ... FYI, England and Sweden are sparring it out on the approach to protecting and closing down and the Swedish minister said only time will tell if either approach is right as when the people come out of being shut in the second wave may cause as many deaths as we have, but with a ruined economy. He was talking about his infection and death rate now being very very low, and they feel herd immunity is being established that is why he says, but the total amount of people dying was high at first.
I agree, we're pushing the SOC limit of thread drift already just yakking about software costs. Let's push Covid-19 and politics into it's own thread if we need to talk about it. Correct me if you feel differently, Ed.
Guys, please put the Covid stuff on the Covid thread.
So what does the current punch list look like, Ed?
Yeah, Ed! Inquiring minds want to know!
That looks like a flame thrower.
No flame throwers!
The punch list is down to like a dozen items. Rattles (door weather stripping?). Double and triple-checking hose fittings and other oily-seepy bits (ordered a sump hardware kit from CB today). The fuel filter in the engine bay....
Which leaks so is now bypassed...
Gonna install some Jet Doctors to bud-nip the dreaded idle jet clogging issue. (And of course I intend to heim-joint the linkage while I'm at it. I have those parts.)
Steering wheel came off for centering and to make the turn signals cancel.
And I still have to pull the disty, lock it out and set up the CB Perf Black Box, which is on the firewall, the wires all curled up and tied down low where you'd have to look for them. Get the vac hoses routed, get the spark map made and dialed in, then pop the O2 sensor in the tail pipe and read the Wide Band as we motor through the gears, over hill and dale, etc.
You know...tuning.*
Then of course the inevitable clay bar, polish/compound, final touch-ups and the photos and vids.
-=-
*So far, by the way, the engine seems to run well. Pulls strong from idle, very little if any "bog" at that common 1500 rpm spot, snappy throttle response in the 2k-4500 range. I've spun it over 5000 and it feels like it likes that, but I've not gone WOT to redline yet as my fuel filter and valve covers have been less than trustworthy.
Your Filter King is leaking? That sucks. Mine's been flawless.
@dlearl476 posted:Only when it's running way too rich!
Mellowed we'd out the exhaust note quite a bit, and keeps to soot off the tail end.
I hear that!
I bought a 3" mild steel exhaust extension from Jeg's, and made a one bolt clamp on it. Inside, I welded a Vortex cone insert. Zero back pressure increase, but takes the edge off the exhaust while idling, but especially during cruise. Plus keeps the soot off the car!
Chris has the exhaust megaphone that came with my Berg extractor system. I bet he might part with it if you're looking for something expressive. Just like the one Bruce Stumpp had with a 3-bolt flange. Ear plugs not included.....
