[pjmoreland]

That should work fine as long as you don't have an A/C system with a heater core coolant flow shutoff valve installed in one of your heater hoses. The coolant needs to be free to flow all the time. I ran a set of Vortec heads that way previously, and I observed no temperature spikes during engine warm-up.

On a side note, I built a complete Vortec engine for my truck recently. I don't currently have A/C, but I'm planning on installing A/C eventually, so I drilled a bypass hole in the passenger side head like older SBC heads had. I didn't want to have to run an external bypass line from the water pump to the intake manifold purely for aesthetic reasons. Fortunately, my l31 block already had the bypass holes in it.