I have everything taken apart right now, I will check for play in the valves when fully open tonight. I am guessing everything will be fine. I bought this engine 3 years ago and completely took it apart, cleaned it, and replaced everything that needed replacing. The only parts that needed replacing were the gaskets only because I took it apart. It had an insane amount of sludge when I first took it apart 3 years ago. The sludge was so thick I question if the oil was ever changed at 120,000 miles! Even though the engine looked as though it was denied oil changes it was still in prestine condition. The Cyl. walls looked as though they were just honed, all bearing surfaces were nice, and there was a hardly noticable ridge at the top of the cylinders. Runs great besides the horrible exhaust leak I will be fixing.
One more question, I have a renix factory header on right now that has a small crack in it that I will fix. I also have a factory header off a 1995 XJ that does not have any cracks in it because they are already fixed. Is the 91-99 header worth the extra work of swapping on to my XJ, I will need to have a new exhaust downtube made for it to work. What do you think, should I keep the renix header or swap to the 91-99 header? Thanks