Soooo, I got the head off tonight. Let me show a couple pics and see if anybody can notice from the pics why the current HG may have failed. Lets turn this into a learning experience for some of you

 

It lives!!!!! Got it running tonight. Just let it sit and run long enough to get it up to temp and get the thermostat to open, and shut it down. Let it cool down and pulled the plugs quick, they looked perfect, as expected. Will take it for it's first test drive tomorrow night, and then can start working on a few of the other minor problems.

 

Yikes, it took 20 days to get this car back together??? Man, I never want to remove a head.

By looking at the photo, I do not see why the gasket failed. Does it have anything to do with the line on the far right poston wall? I wanna learn.

 

It took 20 days because I'm working 60 hours a week

The gasket failed because somebody was in there previously and used copper spray to coat a stock HG. Now, the cylinders were still sealing just fine. They have those metal crush rings that seal them. However, there are RTV lines on a stock HG that seal the oil and coolant passages, etc. What the copper spray did, was it covered those up. They were never able to make a proper seal. So, what happened was: Startup - runs fine. As it warms up, cooling system pressurizes. Since the HG is not able to seal the coolant passages, coolant makes it's way past the HG and into the oil erturn passages, therefore filling the crankcase with water. As the crankcase fills with water, it begins building more and more pressure, thereby forcing the mixture up thru the PCV system and filling the intake manifold, and then going from there directly into the cylinders.

Now that I've got it running, I'm still having some minor issues. Once it warms up, the idle starts surging. I took it on it's maiden voyage tonight, and when I got to a stop sign, it stalled, and hasn't re-started. I went and got a couple gallons of fresh gas just incase. I'm letting it cool down for a couple hours before i go back and try to re-start. If it doens't re-start, i'll just tow it back to the house. The CEL is on, so once I get it back here I need to pull the codes and go from there. I did pull the spark plugs last night after running it for the first time and they looked perfect. I'm sure it's just somethign I missed during reassembly.

 

I assume you changed the oil? If not, dump it now, throw a new filter on and some cheapo oil into the sump. Drain and change filter again in a couple hundred miles, then another filter and good oil.
You'd be amazed how long moisture can stay in teh crankcase and how it will affect the engine.
The copper spray rings alarm bells for me, why did they use it? WHy was the head gasket replaced originally? Was there a sealing issue? That gasket is not at all old.

Regards, Andrew.

 

Oils been changed twice. I changed it before i started the car up for the first time after the HG change, and I just changed it after some running around the neighborhood. My best guess - it appears it popped a HG, perhaps from overheating, and I'm assuming they never took the head to the machineshop from the looks of it.