piston to vavle clearance?

im putting together my 327 as a basic street driver and i was wondering if i should be worrying about piston to valve clearance. the bottom end of the block hasent been touched(stock pistons and bore). but i am putting in the cc 268 cam with .454 lift and i got the felpro 1094 headgasket (.015 thickness) to mount my vortec heads. do i need to check this clearance or is this just for bigger lift cams and such?


also i was reading about degreeing the cam, is that something else i NEED to do, or can i get away with just swapping the cams out by tdc and matching the dots and such.


one more thing, when i pulled my harmonic balancer off i noticed that there was no bolt holding it to the crank. is that normal or am i missing a bolt?