I was starting to wonder if you had collapsed lifters and was about to suggest pulling the valve cover next.

Given it is a new valve train and I hand cranked and made sure the rockers were all moving I think I messed up the timing chain. I just spoke with Russ Pottenger who has done the machine work and sold me the parts (and has been awesome!) and he told me that I may have been looking at the wrong dot on the timing gear. There are dots for the key way and a separate dot to synch the cam. I am guessing I missed that aspect.

Great googly moogly!

My recollection is the cam gear has an alignment pin and the crank gear has a key. It would seem that the only way it could be off would be it is the wrong application.

I think the roller gear I have has 3 key spots (neutral, advance and retard) and a dot. I am guessing I may have used the key spot instead of the dot for lining it up with the cam gear. Heading out to borrow the puller now so we will see!

Oops, wrong comment

So the timing gears look correct. The only thing I can come up with now is I screwed up the rockers. I installed Harland Sharp rollers (I mean, the engine is apart, why not?) and the instructions were just to torque them all to 21 ft/lbs. It didn’t do any kind of zero lash plus x turns or differentiate between open and closed valves so maybe that is the problem?

Have a read of this thread:
https://www.jeepforum.com/threads/ti...1/post-8156699

That is super helpful but I am getting some results redoing the rockers. I don’t know why, to be honest, but instead of following the Harland Sharp instructions, I am doing it a little more traditional and it seems to be working. I ran out of time today to do more than one so I will see how it goes this week.

I really appreciate all of you taking the time to offer your insights!

The stock rockers are not adjustable, and I believe those pretty orange roller rockers are also non-adjustable. I saw in the reviews of those things that you are required to remove the baffles from inside the valve cover. Nothing I could find says what happens if you don't.

They are pretty!

I checked to see if they hit the valve cover before I closed things up. I think there are different baffles on different valve covers. I have aluminum one and it only has small baffles under the vents. They are not adjustable but it seems that the torque specs if the valve is not fully closed might over load the spring and not let the valve fully close. I don’t know.

This guy, starting at about 7 minutes 35 seconds in, starts talking about problems that can be encountered if you prefill the lifters with oil, which is something I've always done. He only briefly alludes to the lifters bleeding down after a time:

I was thinking about it last night, when I should have been sleeping, and I think it has to be the baffles. They cover a portion of each of the 4 cylinders that aren’t getting compression. They are probably pushing the valves open.

My worry is, if I remove the baffles, can’t oil get into the vents? Should I consider a spacer instead? All this assuming I verify that is the problem, of course.

Did you have the valve seats ground and/or valves resurfaced/replaced?

I would do a leak down test to determine if the air is escaping past the rings, valves or gasket.

I also recall reading something about removing the baffles but I recall that the VC wouldn't seat. I suppose if it just barely came short, you might just crank the VC bolts down. Perhaps just remove the VC and look for any marks

Going through old threads on those rockers, some swear you can get by swapping out the baffle fasteners with flush heads - others swear you have to remove the baffles. Others yet say removing the baffles creates blow by problems and the spacer is the right way to go. You'll have to figure out which is best, it's not appropriate to give suggestions without being able to touch and see or have previous experience, which I don't. If you had head work done, I do think you should consider what Saudade has been trying to convey. Summit and JEGS (and others) sell adjustable pushrod length checkers. I personally would validate pushrod length prior to trying start up again. You could also do a compression check with the valve cover off and see what you get.