Ran into a little problem: I noticed some coolant leaking the other day, so I pulled the truck into the shop and started to investigate. It was coming from the area around the thermostat. It was difficult to see, so I broke out a mirror to have a better look. Unfortunately it was the head gasket right above the thermostat
So yesterday I started the teardown. Everything went fairly smoothly until I got to removing the push rods. The back two pushrods are back, under the cowl and I couldn't just pull them out. I tried lifting the head along with the pushrods, but the pushrods were still in the block. At that point I figured my options were pulling the whole engine or drilling holes in the cowl.
So now my truck has "pushrod access holes"
Luckily I was able to get the pushrods out. Upon removing the head, sure enough the head gasket was damaged right above the thermostat. Everything else looked good. For having probably 250k miles on the engine, I could still see cross hatching on the cylinder walls, I think its pretty good.
I'm hoping to get the head machined tomorrow and start putting it back together on Thursday.