Long term update.

Popped a head gasket in late Feb.

When you hit the starter, the motor would barely turn, then make a scary hammering noise, then the smoke started, and the noise stopped, of course it had a horrible miss too, so I shut it off, and towed it to the barn I did the work in as I was afraid to try to drive it there.

One cylinder was actually filling to the top with af when you shut the motor off. The tow was a wise move, as water does not compress and I feel lucky it did not damage the bottom end.

Called a friends shop, they said it was 13 hours of labor.
I replied, it will take me 3 times that long then, and was pretty close to the mark in my guess.

As I had previously done a timing belt, and upper intake, it really wasn't too bad.

The head torquing sequence was really odd, torque, then release all pressure was scary, but the factor manual, and he chiltons both agreed so I held my breath and did it.

The connectors were a pain to disconnect as there were a few differing types of connectors and ways to release them.

I took my time, took lots of pictures, bagged up bolts and labeled them in groups, taped and labeled connectors, and spark plug wires so it wasn't hard to reconnect in the correct places. Really, the wiring harness when you lay it down in place for re-assembly, well, the connectors are all different shapes and will only go the right place.

I replaced all hoses that were exposed and removed just because. Put a new timing belt on just because its only 32 bucks from Nissan and I could not bear the thought of putting a used one back on, eve if it was low mileage.

It lit right up when I hit the key after assembling.
Had a thermostat housing leak right away, no big deal to correct. A few other minor issues that are normal for a job this big. It smoked horribly right away, which scared me very much, but it was not an issue. Remember that the exhaust had been filled with af when the gasket popped. Also had a check engine light from the o2 sensor that got covered in oil and af.
The sensor cleared up after driving a couple of weeks though.

Its back to running fine.