Not a blown head gasket?

So I took my 97 3.4L into the shop to have them do a tune up @ 180k miles, valve cover was leaking and power felt groggy. Had the money and not the time. When I got the truck back, it seemed to crank really hard, so I thought about replacing the PRV(never did, should I?). But then, exhaust started blowing white condensate only at start up, then it would stop when warmed up. I got scared and just threw the thing into the garage. I fire it up here and there to pull the lawn mower out of the mud, and it cranks and runs with zero issues, other than a vapor tailpipe. The vapor isn't "sweet", but the puddle it leaves is relatively viscous, and smells like coolant. I obviously feared the worst, and assumed a blown head gasket. So today, I finally changed the oil and drained the coolant, searching for telltale signs of mixed fluids, but discovered that the oil is fine, no milkiness and no signs of water. The coolant level hasn't changed, and when drained there is no oil Sheen to the coolant fluid... Could the heavy crank be due to a rich fuel/air mixture, and the excess condensate due to too much fuel in combustion? The idle is good, perfectly in spec... Could I just be scared of my truck and there's actually nothing wrong??? There's so many head gasket discussions, with so many people jumping to the conclusion of a blown head gasket, but the tell tale signs aren't conclusive to me. I'm thinking about just running the motor to the ground and replacing it later instead of rebuilding for something that may not even be the case... Heard there's a diesel motor that's a relatively easy swap, which I'd be interested in in the future as my work only allows diesel motors on the job-site. Would anyone mind giving me some feedback on what to do next?

 

And there's no bubbles under the coolant fill cap while the motor is running... So no exhaust getting into the coolant.

 

compression test time. Hot and cold. Leak down also.

The smell in the puddle is scary, the gaskets are old enough to have just slow corroded to a small leak into the chamber. There's a metal core to headgaskets that when coolant gets old and weak it can corrode away leaving a weak spot to compression.

edit: the good thing is, as headgaskets go, these are easy. Timing belts east to remove, cams easy to remove, engine has lots of room. Even if you find something bad. (hope you don't) once fixed it's good to go for a long time.

 

Hey, I'm in little Cypress... Do you have the tools or can I visit you?

 

Yea, I'll PM.