Thanks for the reply. Really appreciate it.
Was leaning toward a cylinder head problem when I arrived at the forum, primarily because the cooling system:
Slowly pressurized only on #4 when doing the valve sealsPressurized immediately when the engine started from coldAnd coolant did not return to the cooling system when cold
I've been 'chasing' two separate issues - burning oil and anti freeze residue (a very small amount) in the exhaust that I'd never seen before in 45 years of tinkering with cars. I was beginning to doubt myself as well as the work done by others. Assumed (there's that word!) that the shop checked the head properly. The shop knew that car had over 200,000 KMs on it when I tore it down.
As I tried to figure out where this re-build had gone bad, I began looking at what I had and tried to eliminate the things that it couldn't be. I knew it would have to be one of three things: the block, the HG or the head. Since I had good compression on all cylinders it appeared that the HG was fine, and once the valve seals were replaced (twice) it stopped burning oil. At that point I figured that I could be faced with a bad block or head. That's when I tried Irontite to see if it would seal the crack, and it sort of worked, exhaust was not laden with any anti freeze moisture (funny, no white smoke though).
Since my garage is somewhat limited, and some of the repairs I have done (although inexpensive to this point) have been by process of elimination (sensors for emissions as an example), I can only approach this last niggling problem by pulling the head (AGAIN) and replacing it with a known good one. If my garage was ready with air and such so I could do this as recommended I certainly would. I truly believe that doing it as recommended is the right thing to do, but without air it won't happen. And as I explained, we just moved and the compressor is over in a corner; - the garage needs to be wired, well you know the drill and now I'm whining, so I'll stop.
When I take the head off, should I be able to see evidence of a crack from the water jacket to the interior of the cylinder, and what might it look like?
The head and the intake have to go on together because of the way the common chamber wraps around the head. There's not a lot of room to get at the bolts that attach the intake to the head from behind; - everything, including the intake runner and common chamber makes getting at the bolts while the head is still on the car a nightmare.
If it makes sense, I'll obtain a new head and swap it with the original and put it back together and see what happens. I'd take it somewhere and have it done, but my labor is cheap and money is also an issue or the garage would be better equipped to do this. New head is about $200+ shipping and core on eBay.
Thoughts?
(edited for clarity, not wishing to be argumentative)