Update - whew, what a day. At this point, I have it mostly assembled, the milkshake oil has been cleaned out of the top of the engine by hand, and the oil pan drained. I kept both of the batteries on a trickle charger while I was doing this, and they are ready to go. I was really hoping to drive it to work tomorrow, but ultimately was thwarted by the exhaust gaskets, and will be taking the Volvo with a chicken sticker on the back to work instead. If you have any tricks for lining up the heavy-ass exhaust while trying to thread the bolts through the gasket, I would absolutely be grateful to hear.
I also wanted to thank the folks again who have taken the time to share their advice. For this repair, I have been going as hard as I can to put this thing back into service, and trying not to compromise quality of my work in the process, so that's always a balance. Overall I feel good about my work, but the proof will be in the pudding.
One more thing - the repair video I've been watching by A-one auto had me put the engine in TDC compression at this beginning, then while adjusting the valves, I turned the crank pulley ONE time, in order to adjust the second set of valves and take up the lash in the pushrods. My question is this - when I took the distributor out, the guy seemed to make a big deal about the engine being in TDC compression, and I assumed it would stay that way until the distributor was replaced, however, now due to the instructions on valve adjustment, cylinder number one is in TDC exhaust. I just replaced the distributor and lined up the rotor with the "8" pointing to the notch, and the flat part lined up with the back of the engine, but I just wasn't sure if that was an oversight having the cylinder in a different part of the cycle than when the distributor was initially removed, and I don't want to be in a position where I'm gonna screw up the engine while starting it, because the distributor is in the wrong position? Appreciate any thoughts you'd have on this.
Thanks again,
Tommy
Longview, WA