Hi. I recently replaced the head and head gasket on my '87 22R 2x with carb. I had air bubbles in the overflow and it lead me to replace the head gasket. The fire ring on #1 was split. So new Beck/Arnley MIJ head gasket is installed. No more bubbles. Along the way I took off the air injection system that goes from exhaust manifold, around the back of the head and to the reed valve, ACV, resonator and to the air cleaner. Plugged the one vacuum line that was running from the VSV to ACV. LCE black off plates installed on exhaust manifold. My truck is 87 Federal and Can. spec. The head I put back on was from my 93 and it was working fine when taken off. The timing marks line up but when I set the static timing to 0 deg. like the sticker says it runs really crappy, so I adjusted the static timing to 5 deg. adv. Runs lots better. I had had a coolant leak over the winter and saw traces of coolant on the top of the front manifold runners. Think I figured out that was because of the extra pressure in the cooling system due to bad head gasket. And that extra pressure pushed coolant out of the thermostat seal, which I found to be in not very good condition. The rubber o-ring type. I replaced it with a new one. I Just went in to adjust the valves again and set them to a loose sliding fit .007 and .011 as they were before. The cam is original and mic'ed out within specs. It has very good compression now and does not burn oil. It was smoking a little blue prior to this head change. When I was inside the engine I looked the cylinder walls over pretty good and they looked very nice, clean and shiny. I don't have any reason to suspect there is anything amiss in the bottom end. Only 190K on it. I torqued all bolts to spec, and have no water leaks nor air leaks that I can find on the intake. I am starting to think it is carburetor related.
Any ideas?