B2000 rebuild and new head but gasket blowing...

Blew a head gasket on my 1987 B2000. Sealed it with Blue Devil to get home. Then I ripped everything apart, sent the head off to the machine shop, and decoded to replace the rod bearings and rings while I had it open, especially because it recently clocked over 250,000 miles on the odometer.

Everything went well, except when I went to run it. White smoke, started to overheat. I didn't even go one mile but just drove it down the lane and back. Coolant in oil... definitely a blown head gasket. Took the thing apart again (see picture of coolant on 4th cylinder), checked to see if everything seemed true still (I would imagine such a short drive wouldn't warp or crack a head that fast), and it did, so I got a new gasket. Am open to the possibility of having done things wrong! I found out that i accidentally forgot to torque bolt number 10 bearest the upper radiator hose. Whoops.

Put the new gasket on, made sure all protocol followed by the book, all surfaces were cleaned up and fresh, and I put everything back together. Started the truck again. White smoke, overheating, coolant in the oil.

What in the hell is going on here! Cracked/warped block? Cracked/warped head (even though machine shop gave me a freshly planed and pressurized one)? Human error?

I'm ready to call it quits on this project and send it off to someone else. I've worked on this for two weeks and put a lot of money into all the parts and machine work.

It is such a shame too because the truck runs great. Transmission, tires, brakes, body, exhaust, all in excellent shape. New water pump, radiator, timing belt, partly rebuilt engine...

What to do, guys... :(

Coolant over 4th cylinder after failed head gasket following rebuild

You might want to get a tap and clean out the bolt holes in the block, and then blow them out with compressed air. It could be that there is something like old gasket material in the holes or corrosion of the threads leading to a false reading on your torque wrench.

It also looks like you are missing the rear centering dowel in the block. You have the one in the front but maybe if the one in the back is missing your gasket is off center. My .02.

Good call with the centering dowel. I did not catch that. However, could it being missing (I do have it) really cause the head gasket to fail to seal? Each of the 10 head bolts went into their proper slots through the gasket and I will think they would keep it centered well enough.

Also, even if my torque measurements were inaccurate due to debris, I wouldn't expect these symptoms to be so fast and so severe. I've lost a quart of coolant driving less than 1 mile. If the bolts weren't torqued fully, I would expect to see signs of head gasket failure later, say 20 miles down the road.

I rebuilt my '88 B2200 engine in 2011. My photos in my thread on this rebuild showed that I only had one of those cylinder head locating dowels, and I don't have any issues there.

I used a FelPro head gasket, would not use cheap one. I also used two wooden dowels in bolt holes to help alignment as I lowered the cylinder head; see my rebuild thread http://www.mazdabscene.com/wiki/65

"Also, even if my torque measurements were inaccurate due to debris, I wouldn't expect these symptoms to be so fast and so severe. I've lost a quart of coolant driving less than 1 mile. If the bolts weren't torqued fully, I would expect to see signs of head gasket failure later, say 20 miles down the road."

Think about this. You went 250,000 without an issue. Now you can't go three miles. I think that indicates your bolts aren't fully pulling down. It's likely that when you were scraping the block to clean it up crap fell into the bolt holes, preventing you from getting one or more of the bolts to pull down properly. Did you use the washers under the bolt heads?

Also you mentioned that the machine shop planed the head. That means the head is now thinner than it was prior to the initial tear down. That also means the bolts have to go into the block another maybe .03 thousanths to compensate for that material removal. I still stand by my original post to you that the threads in the block have corrosion between where the bolts used to bottom and the bottom of the bolt holes so I would suggest that you buy a tap and clean the holes that the bolts have deeper holes to travel into, then blow out the holes with compressed air.