I ran the motor again today when I pulled the car into the carport.
It's still a little hard to start, but it runs quite smooth when it's cool and gradually puts out whitish exhaust as it heats up. It still seem prone to overheating. I'll need to double-check the orientation of the thermostat.

There is no more coolant coming up from the #4 injector bracket bolt hole, so I suspect that that particular issue was due to a very hot head and left-over leaked collant in the bolt hole. This bolt hole is right under the lower heater core hose and I know that I leaked some in all the motor acrobatics.

There is also an odd "surge" in the idle. It runs smooth but the idle rises and falls between 1500 and 2000 rpms. I've not adjusted and synched the carbs yet, but I've never seen such behavior before - maybe related to my head gasket issue. Hopefully balancing the air flow and fuel mix for the new motor will take car of the problem. Has anyone seen such behavior before?

I'm going to disconnect the motor and hoist it out tomorrow to fix the clutch plate incompatability issue. Since I'm immobile anyway, I might as well get that taken care of. Hopefully I can get it back in quickly. I'll tackle the head gasket replacement as soon as the new .8mm Elring arrives - probably late next week.

Since it seems to be a common question, I'll do a compression test on the motor tomorrow and report the results. However, I did not check compression before I pulled this B20 from the 1800E, so I have no real frame of reference. ...Unless JohnMC did a compression test and still has the results.

Thanks for all the advice, Guys.