Congrats! Thanks for the update.
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Yes, good job on figuring it out. I’ve often wondered why the engine designers don’t always make the timing alignment marks pretty much fool-proof, avoiding even the possibility of an ambiguity, but I suppose they have their reasons for they way they do it. If the compressions measure good and more or less equal on both sides now, suggest to monitor the exhaust smoke situation for a while; it might clear up by itself. On the downside, it is possible some damage or other could have occurred running the engine with the timing belt alignment incorrect.
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You may see a little smoke BUT it should clear up pretty quickly. Hopefully someone did not overlook the valve stem seals. Don’t laugh; I’ve seen that a couple of times.
I might ask a few questions. How many miles on the engine and what was the reason for tearing into it originally?
With the advent of unleaded gas many years ago, cylinder head valves and valve seats hold up many times better than they did with leaded gasoline.
It often takes a 150k miles before any valve issues surfaced although that can vary. In many cases the rest of the engine dies before the valves and seats.
I’ve got 200K on this engine, it’s a Toyota Tacoma. It was showing some classic head gasket symptoms - steam in exhaust, brown gook in coolant, etc. The heads are aluminum, but the block is cast iron, so I don’t expect that there is anything wrong with the pistons. The cylinder walls showed very little wear, I could still see the cross hatching from the factory bore.
If you notice your mpg’s have dropped since the rebuild, the smoke could be a fuel/air mixture problem, rather than oil. Some white smoke out the tailpipe is normal on the first start of the day, especially noticeable on mornings w/cooler temps. That’s just steam from the normal combustion process. Suggest to carefully monitor your oil usage and mpgs for a while.