thanks for that.
Moparforlife commented that he wasn't convinced it was a head gasket issue also and I hung my hopes on his intuition.
I pulled the valve covers off and everything looks in order.

I don't have my helper so I can't crank it over

As I was warming it up, it initially ran fine when I set the idle @ 1500 rpms.
My helper looked at me like "so what's the problem?", then the symptons started to occur again.

The oil pressure almost pinned itself and the temp gauge was heading toward the overheating mark.
I had to bump the idle screw to 2000 rpms to keep it running. It would run, then stumble as if it has a miss.

When I reduced the idle to 1200 (which is the idle recommeded by the cam shaft people)it was barely able to stay running.

I'm not sure what to do at this point.