[HWgeek]

Gee,
I just did that July 4th weekend and the week following. I got lucky and bought a beautiful guards red 86 951. Just beautiful, except for the scoring on cyl wall #3. You can't hone these blocks, the aluminum/silica mix doesn't like that. So took my other engine (yea I had a spare engine) and had two 951 in the garage at once. bad engine out, good engine in. 5 days with friend helping.
3 days solid (8hr +) for pulling and moving, 2 days for connect and oh forgot this wire stuff.
Nice running car now. Still sorting out little gremlins. argh.

Like mentioned - rollers and timing belt - very critical, basically say bye-bye to the engine if you neglect those items.

Get the 951 turbo manual or check out clarks-garage.com lots of good stuff.

you can do compression and leakdown tests, might shed some light on possible blow headgasket issues.

Good luck!