Mine has been sitting 20 months saved me ton on fuel cost lmfao
Too dam cold to work on it right now so work on it is now slow its halted to stand still.I enevy those who have a heated garage this time of year.

 

Don't forget to clean out the oil returns in the heads and the block. I use an old gun cleaning kit. Aluminum rod with a brush, (kinda like a baby bottle brush) on the end

 

You mean one of these One of the best cleaning tools I own, for my vehicles and my firearms

 

Hmm, looks like you've already cleaned the returns! Either that or a well used firearm.

 

Well, that would be an incredibly resilient weapon if it was caked that bad and still usable.
Update time (No pictures, camera battery is dead and takes 4 hours to charge
Heads are back on, valve train buttoned up, exhaust buttoned back up. I cheated with cleaning most of the rest of the parts, as we are supposedly getting more snow tomorrow evening, meaning this has to be done by then, along with the usual Friday workload. Looks like I may not be sleeping tomorrow night Once this is completed, I think it's time for a 4 door again. Kid will be here March, and Getting a carseat in and out of the 2 door is no where near as easy as the 4 door. That and there is seating for 5 and way more cargo room with the spare underneath, and the extra few inches. Once I get my hands on that, I will post a new thread about the issues I have with that one Thanks for all the help and advice guys! I am glad I decided to join the forum. It's a great community here!

 

She LIVES!!! Running damn good too. Oil pressure is still perfect even with the 5W20, so thanks for the advice, Captain. Just need to get this thing up in the air to properly button up the exhaust, as I have wicked leaks at the Y-pipe on both sides. Other than that, she seems to be alright for now. I rushed through the last bits of everything, and I can almost guarantee I screwed something up somewhere, and I am fully sick and tired of this truck. But she's all together for now.

 

Cool! Take care of the last tid bits and you might even want to keep it! Keep us posted.

 

Will do, Captain. I would love to keep it, as it drives damn good. So far, however, it's just been an endless barrage of little things leading to bigger things. At this point, it seems there isn't much else to replace, though (Knock on wood) We shall see. I prefer the 4 doors for cargo and passenger room, but the 2 doors seem to be a ton more fun. Maybe I can have both The misses would kill me haha

 

Well, I think it's about time for an update.
Gas mileage has improved again, still only slightly. This fillup, I average 14.8 MPG, which won't be entirely accurate, because of idling for a fairly extended period of time after the top end was buttoned back up. I also have a rough idle at startup on very cold days with a cylinder 2 misfire code in the PCM. I did a static compression test at 80PSI and lost about 15 PSI in a matter of seconds. I am not losing any coolant and am not losing/burning any oil either. I am thinking I may have messed up when torquing the head bolts down. I torqued in sequence, 3 passes to 70lb/ft on all bolts. I used my carpenter's straight edge and didnt notice any warping in the block or on the heads themselves. The rough idle goes away completely after about 2 minutes and doesn't come back for the rest of the day, multiple days if it stays above freezing. All the plugs are new (again) and everything else seems to be fine. This didn't happen right away either, which makes me think I may not have messed up the torquing, and I have never had this problem before. I was going to put new valves in when the heads were off, but I rushed through the latter half of the job because of the threat of snow, so I never changed valves or had the seats re-ground. The valves all looked OK to me, with the exhausts having a slight white tint to them. This truck is just one headache after another after another. This has been the longest year of vehicle ownership ever!!! oh well, I think it's time to just drive it till the motor lets go completely and start fresh.

 

You mentioned the exaust valves what did the intakes look like?Is and can it be very possible that # 2 intake is sticking causing your compression loss?Also since the heads were off did you use new head bolts?