History: Trooper overheated do to waterpump. I replace the waterpump and decided while I have the front of the engine apart I would put a new timing belt on it. When I put the new timing belt on I was one tooth off. Well that damaged my valves. I had the head rebuilt and resurfaced, the machinist told me he had to surface farther than recommended by manufacturer which 15 thousands, he went 20 thousands. But said if I installed s shim I would be ok.
The problem: I put the reworked head on, torque it down put it everything back on and started it up. Started great ran great. I let it warm up to operating temp. then shut it down. I let it cool then started it back up. It idled great for a few minutes then dropped off idle and stalled. I started it back up and kept it running with the accelerator. Then the dreaded white smoke came bellowing out the tail pipe. My first thought is I blew the head gasket. But I checked the compression in every cylinder and they all were 165ish psi. so compression is fine.
My questions are:
Can the head gasket be blown and still get good compression readings?
Has anyone used a shim between the gasket and block and it work fine for them?
Can coolant get in the engine any other way besides a blown head gasket?
Help anyway you can, I love this truck and want to keep it. Of course money to worth ratio is starting to be the problem.

Which Trooper/motor are we talking about?

Whoops. It's a 1988 2.6 EZ1 4 cylinder

Ah, well I am more of a 2nd gen guy, but there are definitely some first gen experts around here...

I really doubt that your troubles are related to the head resurface. The 2.6 has such low compression that the modest increase in compression shouldn't hurt. It is a little weird that you are getting coolent in to the cyl. without seeing a loss of compression on one of the cyls. If you are really loosing coolent into the cyl. you are going to have to pull the head again and check it out.
If you do pull the head I strongly recomend you buy a 3m roloc disk. These things are amazing at cleaning up the surface and wont leave harmful debris behing like a scotch brite pad will.