Looking for some advice

[ironridge]

Have a few questions that I'm hoping someone can help with. A little history. 1997 3500HD L65 HO . Engine has a Jan 1997 build date. w/69k miles. Right head gasket failure at front cooling port(typical location). Deck of block showed a fair amount of erosion so I opened the can of worms. Decided to tear the head off the other side found some more deck erosion between cyl 3/5 but not near a coolant passage. did find some evidence of coolant consumption in No.3 suspect the crack between the valves on the head (found four of the 8 cracked between the valves) After snooping around here and reading about the issues with this engine I decided to tear it down and check the rest of the engine to see if it was worth fixing. I magged the block and crank(OK). Sent it out and had it decked .010. Now for the questions. Now I've read the crack repair procedure(for the heads) and was wondering if this will fix a crack that has gone thru to the coolant? I can't get a shop in My area to touch them so I am thinking of doing this myself. What type of sealant do they use on the sleves? Or should I just bite the bullet and drop the k for new ones?
This engine , other than the above problems, is like new inside.

I'm also considering lowering the compression by cutting the pistons .020 and was wondering what you actually have to do to increase the boost on these computer controlled engines? My understanding is that they dropped the compression to 20.2 did that include the HO engine?

Anybody's knowledge welcome.

Thanks

[DIESEL5]

I am no expert but if were mine would rather the little extra now on a good set of heads since everything else looks good in the motor. I learned the hard way after doing a head job on my 93 two months ago. I decided to just do the head job and not even worry about the bottom end since it was running great with the exception of a leaking head gasket through the exhaust and after three weeks of it being back together and running great again I developed a low oil pressure issue and low and behold it had spun three main crank bearings. After finding that the block was scrap and a new engine cost me five grand. I Kick myself because in all my experience with gassers i would completely go through the engine top to bottom when doing a head job(talk about an exspensive lesson this time) I guess the moral of this story (my own stupidity) if your gonna do a job dont cut corners and it right the first time!!!!!!!!!!!! In the long run it will be cheaper trust me