Right now, your engine should be free of the birds nest of vacuum hoses and emissions equipment. Go ahead and remove your headers if you haven't already (you'll probably need a new gasket anyway). If you removed everything then you should have the following left:
-The core of the motor (block, head, valve cover, timing cover, water pump, oil pump, fuel pump)
-Distributor (with no vacuum hoses attached)
-Intake manifold (bare with no carb, hoses or fittings attached)
It should look a little something like this (if you removed the intake manifold):
or this (if you left the intake manifold on):
Don't mind the circles, I get to those in a minute.
This is a good opportunity to clean the gasket surfaces and make sure that everything is removed.
