Pretty sure head gasket is leaking

Totally understand …. I would definitely look into head gasket replacement seeing it never overheated

 

Thanks for the advice Dave! I was thinking the same thing as you where as you just don’t know if a used engine was properly maintained? Gonna aim for HG replacement

 

Yes. you know your truck was maintained…. No idea if the used one was and can easily follow down a dark rabbit hole

 

My 2.7 recently had a blown head gasket, the head was just barely warped so I think they took like .004 off of it. This also helped in the fact I didnt have to bother scraping the 20 year old stuck on gasket material off also. It may have been okay to bolt back on without machining, but this also saved me time and ensured the new gasket had an ideal surface to adhere to. They also cleaned it up and checked that the valves weren't leaking by for it also.
This all cost me $150 cash at a local machine shop.

I'd say if you have the head already off to go ahead and get it check for flatness, it'll probably need to be machined but its your money. Would suck to have to redo the entire job if the headgasket blows in a short time.

 

Correct and correct