'95 6.5 rebuild

[Reddog]

I've been a member for about two years buy rarely post until now. You were all a great help when I bought my '94 6.5 and I'll be counting on you all while I rebuild my new '95 project truck. I bought a non running '95 k3500 cc srw for a good price. The guy I bought it from said he only had it a few weeks and it quit on him the second day and had no idea why :mad:.I towed it home changed the batteries replaced some glow plugs and started it. Well it ran real rough and was pouring coolant out the pass. side head, so much for an easy fix.My wife found some paper work from a previous owner with his # so I called him to try to get some history. He was a teacher at a collage in wa. (I'm in Or.) and one day on his way to work it started blowing white smoke that smelled like coolant. Said he didn't want to mess with it so he donated it to the diesel tec dept. at the collage.I tried and tried to reach the diesel instructor to ask what they had done with the truck but he wouldn't return my calls.Well I've pulled the engine and started tearing it down. Now I know why the guy wouldn't call me back, it was missing various nuts and bolts in the top end ,turbo oil return was loose and pouring oil, the rail lines on the i.p were only finger tight, and the out line from the filter ran to the drain and the drain line went to the i.p. What was this guy teaching? It's a wonder it started at all. So much for the history. When i got the pass. head off it had the classic blown spot between cylinder and water passage. It looks like the original gasket because there is no extra steel reinforcement in this area. Both heads have the classic crack between the valves of #7 & #8. Isn't this the spot that can be repaired? After visual inspection the center three main webs don't looked cracked so unless magnaflux says otherwise I'll rebuild this one.The truck has 145K miles and I can see the hone hash marks in the cylinder walls but the cyl. next to the gasket failure has some corrosion or I'd just rering it. Question, how do I get the timing set off? Do I need a puller on both the cam gear and the crank gear ? Northern auto parts has a master rebuild kit for $1060 but you can't get 18:1 pistons from them. If you get the kit w/o pistons they only discount the price $240. I'm building on a budget but I plan to include a stud girdle, cooling up grades , gauges, and a chip. I'd sure like to put in 18:1 pistons .If anyone knows of an affordable kit that includes them please let me know.
Thanks,Jeff