Decided to send the head to the machine shop. Even though the warpage, as I measured it, was quite under allowable limit I just didn't like the prospect of having to do all this again ever, especially soon.

Got a couple of questions about reassembly, etc.:

OIL - The car has been running Redline 10W-30, which is what it has in it right now. I don't think that it is a good idea to put it back together and just leave the oil in it. What I want to do is put new oil in and drive for a few hundred miles to clean out all crud and crap from head gasket explosion/failure, and whatever got inside during repairs. I'd like to make the "clean-out" oil something cheap, like Castrol GTX, of which I keep cases around (for the RX-7). Since I did the long conversion to synthetic a year ago, and only want to run dino oil for a few hundred miles to clean out any crud, will I have to go through the whole complicated conversion to synthetic fill/change filter/change both/etc. as in the faq again, or can I just run the Castrol for a few hunderd miles, then drain it/change filter/refill with Redline and resume normal oil change intervals?

TURBOCHARGER - How do I flush out the turbo's oil and water passages? When taking it out, I noticed that is seemed to keep some oil in the bearing housing. Makes sense that it does, it would keep the bearing lubricated at start up until the oil pump gets everything going. Should I try to use a little funnel and prefill the turbo with oil when I put it back in? How do I clean out the compressor inlet as much as possible. It has been sucking in lots of crud from the crankcase breather system and there was gook all over the inlet.

COOLING SYSTEM - Well, stupid me. The one thing that I did not buy in advance was more Volvo coolant. Further, my wife has done enough running around for this project that it would not be right to ask her to run across town to Volvo and pick up something else. Why not? Guess who, among many other things, took the head to the machine shop? Where the guy had 4 phones ringing and made her carry the dirty, nasty and heavy head in from her car herself! In the pouring rain, no less. And guess who then got a call from her husband asking her to drive her drenched and fuming little self over to the tool shop and pick up a M12X1.75 thread tap so he could chase out the head bolt holes? So anyway, I didn't fully drain the cooling system, and what come out was very clean (less than 8 months old, and I got about 1 gallon out). NO, I don't want to pour it back in, just establishing that what is in there is in very good condition. Can I just top it back up with distilled water, drive to the Volvo dealer myself, come straight home, then fully drain and refill before any other driving? It would have a very low % of Volvo coolant in it for about 55 miles, but it should be enough to lube the pump and I live in Florida, where it is about 65 deg. at night, so no worry about freezing.

Again, thanks for all the help, ideas, tips, and thoughts. As soon as the head comes home tonight (I wonder if they'll make her carry it out to the car?), I'll update on what the machine shop said. Before beginning work on it the guy said it actually looked pretty good, but he hadn't measured anything yet. He did say that he didn't think, just by eyeball, it would be necessary to take off the full 20/1000 of an inch that Volvo allows.
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Scott Cook - 1991 745T, 1985 RX-7 GSL-SE, 1986 Toyota Tercel (Don't laugh, it is reliable, faithful AND gets 41 mpg!)