truck dies and hard time starting

I have a 88 b2200 with the 2.2. I recently put new head gasket in and now sometimes the truck will idle low and oil light will come on and die. Then it starts hard after. Also the hose from valve cover to air breather fills up with milky substance. The hose has a hard bend in it would it be from that. Thanks for the help.

Do you drive short trips? If so that could be causing the milky substance, if not, then check the oil for water contamination, something may have gone wrong, or if you did not change your oil when you did the head gasket, coolant may have ran down into the oil pan when you removed the head.\

I think the oil light is coming on because the idle gets so low that the oil pressure drops low enough to trigger the light. Stock carb? If so, did you check and re connect all of the vac lines correctly? Also, did you check your ignition and cam timing?

Yes I was only driving about 10 miles back and forth to work. The oil is clean. I thought maybe its cause of the hard bend and not getting enough air? Could i just put one of those air breather filters right on the valve cover?

The carb is stock. When its cold it always ran low idle. You would have to keep it runnin for a minute or two before it would idle. Everythin was hooked up correctly. Could it be egr or is there an idle screw somewhere.

Anything is possible. Could be an egr. I had a car that the egr would stick, and it did not idle and ran super rough at lower rpm's, but 2000 and up was fine. Put a drill bit in the egr vac line, and all of a sudden it purred like a kitten lol. That one would start up fine and idle fine until I put a load on the motor, then the EGR would open and stick open, then pop closed when it stalled or I shut it off.

If you only have milky goo in your breather pipe, I would not be too concerned, if you do a longer trip over 30 minutes to get the engine and oil fully warmed up, it should evaporate the condensation formed from short trips.

I would look into your choke system, make sure it is working, as it sounds like it is not.

One question, does it run funny when it dies, or does it just up and turn off like you turn the ignition off? If it just shuts off like you turn the key off, try wiggling the ignition when it is running, that could be faulty, which is a known issue on these. The electrical part does not make contact and I think its the contact for the ignition system that looses contact, so the starter is turning the engine, but the coils and everything is not getting power.