update.....
first off I want to thank everyone for taking the time to share their knowledge and help.
So I removed the rad, water pump, p/s pump, alt and brackets. Next I popped out the leaking (weeping) frost plug on the pass side along with a plug at the very front of the block. Then I ran water from the garden hose and flushed out what I could. Quite a bit of sludge (debris, sludge, stuff that doesn't belong) came out. I then popped out a plug on the drivers side also at the front of the block. At this point I borrowed a scope and tried to get a visual look inside. I had a difficult time figuring out where I was as it looked like I was inside some underwater cave or something. I did see the inside of a plug or two. I generally was satisfied that 95% of the sludge was gone, At this point I aimed the probe upwards and to my dismay I saw what looked to be a blocked coolant passage. (could see the blue gasket) I believe it was the closest to the front of the engine. I then looked in the drivers side at the same places and saw identical images. I do believe that directly behind this passage was a similar passage that I could see a opening through to the head.(could see a hole in the blue gasket) So at this point I think aha there's the problem, no circulation as a result of this restriction. I wasn't prepared to pull the heads off yet. I have reinstalled the water pump, rad etc. No thermostat as recommended by most. Started up the engine and discovered that the lower rad hose eventually got hot and could see circulation of coolant in the top of the rad. (very happy at this point) So far after running the engine at fast idle for some time the temp gauge stayed in the safe zone.(directly straight up and in the middle). Haven't had a chance to take it out on the road for the real test. hopefully that will happen today. My questions now are should I run a thermostat and are those gaskets suppose to block these passages????? Thankyou to all and will update later

Bennoel