Success!
 

I'm cautiously optimistic. I finally changed the cylinder head correctly (I think) and the truck now runs. It's a little noisy, and I have a p0172 and a p0132 to chase down, but the truck is running.

Thank you so much for all of your help. This is far and away the most ambitious repair I have ever done, and it would have been impossible without RonD among others.

Thank you again.

Tim

You've done well young Padawan, the force is strong...

Off all the engines that I've come across, it's got to be the quirkiest design ever with no keys on the cam sprockets or on the crank.
That makes the valve timing procedure some-what challenging that's for sure _ and very easy to bugger up, plus the fact that the valve timing appears to be quite tight, if it's out just a little but, it doesn't seem to take much for the piston to strike a valve.

Thanks Jeff, and thanks for your help too.. Yes, the timing is a real pain. It gets frustrating, which can lead to errors. It is running nice and smooth, and I know I have a stud for the exhaust manifold to work on a bit. I didn't sink the stud all the way earlier, so I can get that stud in correctly then torque the manifold down better and I think I'll be a lot quieter. It was smoking quite a bit when I first fired it up, but I ran it for about 30 minutes (and went and tooled around town a little) and the smoke is subsiding. Probably just some moisture somewhere it doesn't belong. Next I'll be flushing out the cooling system and refilling it. I have been running it on water just to clear out any little debris that may be in there. Cleared those codes and they haven't come back.

So far so good!

OK so my truck is smoking. I've run some ether through to try and clear out any residual water, but it's still smoking. White smoke. The plan is to run it and drive it a lot this week to see what happens.

Wish me luck!

Ran some ether through. Initially it was encouraging, the smoke died down a lot. But then it kind of came back. I guess I'll drive the truck around town a lot this week and see if it resolves.

Anybody else have this issue?

No more codes, nothing. Sounds good, runs nice and the only issue is the smoke.

Thanks,

Tim

Just to update in case anybody is curious, I did drive the truck around today, and the smoke seems to be gone. Last night I was just idling it, I think under load I may have burned any residual moisture out.

Again, I hesitate to claim victory, but so far so good. I think there was a little moisture in there that has now pretty much burned out. I'm not losing coolant, so I have been pretty convinced it's not an improperly installed head gasket.

Thanks again.