I have one it may be a ahu or 1z, but I removed the cooler, egr (replaced with older AAZ intake) and made a blockoff plate for the exhaust manifold. All egr stuff is gone (new coolant hoses as well).
Runs fine. My car had about 1/8" caked soot on the head as well, all that had to be cleaned off and vacuumed as best I could before running it. The delete is nice once done, but I think the hardest part was cleaning the intake ports in the head. The rest is all bolt on items.