BTDT x2! So, I feel your pain!
I lost an entire driving season while porting the heads and repairing a burnt valve. That was the bad news. The good news came indirectly by way of an oversight boo-boo by the shop doing the valve job: It lead to an article for the HOTB regarding verifying necessary pre-loading dimensions for the lifters.
Then there was last year's cockpit error just over a year ago resulting in my little crash. The bad new is I didn't have the car repaired until almost a year later. The good news was, at precisely 10:30 AM on May 10th this year, the car was fixed. 15 minutes later, Ami and I were on the road on our way to the Mountain Run 2! (Everyone needs to put the
Mountain Run on their "BUCKET LIST"!)
Glad your Z is on the road. Like Pete told me once when I was getting depressed about the car being down: "Once you have it all together and you whack that throttle the first time, you'll forget about all the troubles it took to get you there!" He was SOOOO right about that!
