What gives you the impression I'm giving up? I want to do this methodically and properly, and document the steps as I perform them so that I know where I started, where I end up, and what kind of improvements I've seen without going off what I call the "butt dyno" (though in this case it's "eyes & ears dyno".)

I'll be doing exactly what you sugegst - I'll leave the engine set up on the timing wheel and I'll be checking and re-checking my work as I go. I'll draw everything out before I make a cut and I'll do my best to duplicate side-to-side. I have probably 15 cylinder heads under my belt so I know my way around a die-grinder, but this kind of work is a bit small for that tool so I'll resort to the dremel + cable drive and the 1/8" bits.

I'm not sure what you mean by "fuel pooling" - if you're talking about the pattern on the piston I fully expect it. Fuel spray coming out the ports is always going to clean off the areas it's aimed, and the piston is the closest thing to the ports so I imagine that's what'll get cleaned first. I'm not worried about pooling in a 20,000+ RPM motor, in any event, but I'll still be doing my best to keep things atomized.

No spare cylinders - this is my first engine so if I mess it up I'll get an SH18 to replace it, as so many people have told me to do.

Thanks for all the help & advise, Jim - I do appreciate it. Though I'm experienced in full size gasoline engines I'm still new to this, though I'm familiar with the concepts.

As promised, here are the stock port dimensions:
-Boost port is .308" wide, and .084" is open between the piston at BDC and the top inside edge of the port. Of course since the top of the port is beveled towards the cylinder, the area is hard to measure otherwise.
-Transfer ports are .250" wide, and .103" is open between piston at BDC and top of the port. Width is estimated (+/- .005" ) at the entry to the port, again because the side walls of the port are angled towards the boost port.
-Exhaust port is .440" wide at the inside edge and .170" between piston and top of the port. Impossible at this time to measure the sleeve/case mismatch, but I'd estimate it at .010".
-Crank port is .275" wide by .415" at the longest point.
-Piston hole is .215" in diameter. Clearly this can be increased to match the .308" wide boost port, even if the boost port width is left alone.

Crud... now that the engine is back together I realized that I forgot to measure the thickness of the sleeve wall.

Oh, yes. The engine is back together. I plan on running it a bit more, for the next couple weeks or so, and I'll do my best to get some good video of it so that we can compare the before-after. I'll look for a good paved parking lot with painted dividers so that I can (hopefully) time the truck between set points to measure speed and average acceleration by analyzing the video frame-by-frame.