Well, I've been holding off making this post because it's both embarrassing and humbling, but here it is: I f@wked something up real good. I got it all back together mechanically (front clip still largely off, starting the winch install) and got fluids in it and went to give it a test fire. I was in the car, but a buddy helping said he heard at least 2 *bad* metal to metal sounds as it tried to fire and died. We confirmed we were getting fuel and spark, so I did a compression test and the driver's bank of cylinders were fine... passenger bank was 0... like needle not even wiggling. To be dead zero a valve basically has to be hung (timing being off a tooth or two would just make it have poor compression generally). YAY. I got a borescope in there and confirmed bent/hung valves. No good deed goes unpunished, and this is what I get for changing the timing set that was perfectly fine.
So WTF went wrong? Honestly I don't know. I ordered a reman longblock yesterday (which includes some improvements to address known 4.7 flaws) and once it comes in we'll rip this one out and pull the valve covers and front cover and such and figure out what happened.
During the course of working on it I had several friends helping. For the T-set portion I had a buddy who is a professional mechanic helping every step of the way. We triple-checked everything and if you scroll back you'll see we got pictures of every single timing mark in the right place. We cleaned, loctite'ed and torqued every bolt to spec. I even had a 2nd professional mechanic friend (20+ year master tech w/ Lexus) stop by before the front cover went back on and he verified everything.
All I can think of is something in the new timing set let go. I'd like for that to be the answer so I don't have to blame myself so much... but it just doesn't make sense. For the valves to bend as badly as they did the timing had to be WAY off so I don't think it "jumped a tooth" (plus chains don't usually do that, that's more of a timing belt thing). Not to mention, we rolled it over multiple revolutions by hand successfully with the front cover and valve covers off before we put any of that on. Turning it by hand we would have felt/heard piston to valve contact (we had the spark plugs out so it'd roll smoothly specifically so we could feel for any issues). Something had to have let go... and I just can't fathom why, other than I must have been a horrible human being in a past life... my CARma sucks.
I'll follow up with my usual pictures from what got done, but I had to put that out there first...
