Welcome. Great color that Nile Black /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif You say you are committed to this project, that is a necessity with these cars. I wouldn't say they are exceptionally difficult to work on, but they are old and kind of masochistic it seems. That said having a clean, healthy GVR4 is more gratifying than just about any other road legal turbo AWD offering stateside that's relatively easy to acquire.
Throw a heatshield on that exhaust mani! That charge hose that runs over top the exh manifold looks like the one that was on 1951 when i got it. Previous owner wasn't using the heatshield which melted that hose in the same spot. I had to tape mine up also until i bought a replacement. It wasn't long till the tape gave up and it started leaking.