Well, I've never had/heard the engine running and was told it was in good working order. I was able to turn it over by hand and did not feel any valve/piston contact. From what I can tell everything turned/turns over w/out interference issues. As I mentioned on page2, removing the timing belt (honestly I don't really remember the exact sequence of events in taking this apart as my memory sucks as well) caused the valves to contact the pistons (which had a fair amount of soot on them even after I removed a bit)
Yah, my projects um tend to last a long time (understatement) ... life seems to get in the way I guess.
-T