Mike, you'll find the fit of the cover plate holes to the block's ports is equally bad. Port-matching seems like a reasonable thing to do, so thats what I did. There are two different front covers and both are badly matched.
Also, on two front plates (early & late) I found mis-centered front main seals: the recess was significantly off to one side and below the c/l of the crank. That has to influence seal life. Hard to believe the things are dowelled for precise platement- and its wrong!
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