Forward progress. I’d forgotten, initially, to loctite the bolts that Josh said to loctite. I remembered to do it before the lower oil pan though, so I went back and did that, as well as the oil pickup bolts since apparently they’re problematic as well. I went ahead and doubled the lower oil pan gasket and hope that it works out.

Other frustrations–the Bentley manual talks about an oil supply check valve that goes in the block, but neither of mine had any such thing. Some internet searching found lots of other perplexed people. Apparently the part is listed, but it doesn’t actually fit unless you machine the threads in the block. Not having any interest in that, I’ve chosen to believe the parts of the internet that say such a valve was only for later years. It probably does need a valve–possibly related tow hy it takes 20+ seconds on a cold start to get oil pressure? Or maybe that’s because my oil pickup was smashed into the bottom of the pan.

I feel like there must have been more than one alignment sleeve between the block and the head, but the head came back with only one in the baggy of bits of they removed. Possible it stayed with the block and I lost it. Possible there was only one. I put it back together with one.. How misaligned could this get, anyway?

I used the cams and caps that came with my car, because the ones that came with the replacement engine looked servicable, but noticeably more worn. Some of the hydraulic lifters that came with my car had some pretty significant pitting on the surface, so I swapped the questionable ones out. They have different part numbers. I hope that works out.

I thought I’d ordered new bits for all the timing chain stuff. The old version of the guide that goes against the tensioner is NLA, but the new one is still available. Only, for some reason, it appears my new timing case had the old style installed. The difference appears to only be that the stud it pivots on is much, much larger on the new version. Not having a new stud, I used the better of my two worn ones. I’m sure it will last long enough for me to drive into a tree, right?