This is how I spent my afternoon!

Yum. Looks like your doing the typical lower gasket job eh?

Yup! Unfortunately someone has done the gaskets recently and updated them with the metal gasket, too bad they did a crappy job of sealing the valley gaskets and it was leaking oil pretty bad.

How hard could it be to seal both ends up!?!?!?

spare the goop spoil the job

Unless it was because the wrong end gaskets were used. The Felpro kits come with end gaskets for both the L36 and L67 engines.

Looks very familiar. Gotta remember to put that dab of RTV in the corners of the end gaskets.

They were the right gaskets with the locator tabs just who ever did it used a tiny dab of silicone in the corners and the bottom of the gaskets and block were wet with oil. I usually put a skim coat of sealant on end gaskets just as insurance even though the instructions say not to.

I thought the end gaskets were RTV'd to the intake gaskets per the instructions?

Yes to the intake gaskets but not all the way across the valley. I like to give it a light coat on top and bottom of the rubber valley gasket. Just habit from all the small blocks I've screwed together.