Just to be clear...
The cams spun freely when the head was removed, and after checking with a straightedge, there was NO warpage - nada. zero. It did have some mild corrosion, which my machinist brought to my attention as being a possible problem that could cause the head gasket to blow later. The original failure was corrosion of the block, which ate away the ENTIRE deck. The head got a little corrosion, and my machinist offered to have me find another head. However, these motors often blow balancer gears, the bits of which plug the oil passages and destroy the cam bearings, rendering the heads useless. I plan on doing a balancer delete on this engine to avoid those issues.
Since I can't find a good head, and a new one is as much as an entire new motor (well not as much, but still a ton of money) the machine shop will grind away the corroded areas of the water passage near the deck and the deck itself, and will send them to a reputable welder. The head will then be decked to cut the welds flush, not because it is warped.
Just a little backstory, maybe most of you know:
When the fourstrokes where coming out, they were so heavy that a material with a higher specific strength was needed to bring the weight down, and so they did. Except that the new alloys would rot like crazy, especially in the case of yamaha (looking at the F225) and to a lesser extent, suzuki. Most of the newer motors have that issue sorted, but there are plenty of motors out there that are in the corrosion years (i'd say somewhere between 2000-2014) so buyer beware!
