I just pulled the heads on my 351m. I heard that i should clean them up before re assembling. I scraped the gaskets, but what else needs to be cleaned before putting them back on? Also, what should i spend on new head gaskets?

 

I would clean up the combustion chambers where the valves are. A wire wheel on a drill works pretty good. Remove all of the carbon build up that you can. Also make sure that the oil return holes are open.
Why did you pull the heads?

 

I pulled the heads because i had to get some manifold bolts drilled out. My one friend says i should do some valve lapping. Is that important to do? I'm wanting to get it back on the road as quick as possible so i'm not to enthusiastic to do that unless i really should.
Thanks for you help!

 

You are at the ideal time to do a valve job, the gaskets are not cheap and the heads are already off.
If the motor doesn't have too many miles and was running smoothly you could skip it.

 

I'm probably too late, but the thing to do is fill the ports up with solvent (varsol or kerosene or similar) and see how bad the valves leak. It is practically free to pop the valves out and hand lap them and to put new stem seals on. Of course, while everthing is apart, you can do a nice job cleaning up all the parts without driving dirt in between the moving parts. Gl