This is a great thread. A combination of a careful job with pictures and heavy hitters giving advice. I wish I'd done the same when doing my own head gasket jobs.

 

The heads are designed to be interchangeable so they can be used on either side. That means that they need to have all the water and oil galleries open that could need to be open regardless of which direction things are flowing in. (If you took a head from the left side and used it on the right, you would rotate it through 180 degrees so that what used to be the "exit end" for coolant flow, for example, would now be the "inlet end.")
But the block is designed to restrict or direct the flow as needed. The place where you see it blocked off in your photo has a small hole rather than a full open gallery. That's done on purpose to control the flow of coolant. Nothing is wrong there!

 

That was the question in my mind. Why? Since these trucks are relatively hot, why not make that passage the size of the other one? Anyway, just a thought. thank you. Can you drill a larger hole on that side? HEHEHEHE!

 

I have new sets of injectors. Is it good to replace them all while its taken down? As far as low grade gas, never did even once. Ah! I remember I went to sunocco one time and the guy filled it up with regular gas and I told them to siphon the gas out. They had it on the lift etc but they cant drain the gas. After an hour or so, they let me with free fill up and put a gasoline conditioner in tank. They told me that if something happened to the truck until the next fill up, they will cover the damage. Well, it did not happen but that was years and years ago.

 

WELL, I AM VERY THANKFUL TO ALL FOR THE ADVICE DURING THE PROCESS. TRULY GRATEFUL.

Truth: I had this done before with a Land Rover Specialist in Dumont, NJ. Took them close to 2 months to do the job with tons of excuses! Since now I'm doing this with my son, We found out that there were so many bolts not installed back or missing. They left screwdriver and a pair of glasses within the manifold gasket. Also one side of the exhaust manifold had 2 gaskets installed and missing bolt. That could be why, the truck sounded like a tank when climbing up hill.

 

Just to add to what I found with the pevious HG job. I found a black stranded wire coming from the top of the manifold leading all the way to the bottom of the truck. It got pinned and cut between the ac compressor mount.

 

Here are the photo of the wire that was disconnected. What is this wire for? It was not connected for a long time.

 

Hard to say what that might be for. There are so many wires and sensors on these things that it could be anything from an unused ACE ram to a critical emissions component.

As far as drilling larger coolant flow holes, that's nothing to do with why these are prone to overheating. They overheat because of silly design choices outside of the engine block, not within it.

 

Knock sensor?

 

Looks like a knock sensor to me too. It is a coax type cable that has splices with electrical tape at the end, Inside the casing. Absurd.

Should go down to the sensor under/inside the motor mount.