I agree with Carlos. There is nothing like being naive and having a slightly bent valve drop and grenade your pistons, cylinder head and block. Particularly, the exhaust valves are inconel heads attached to Chrome-Moly stems. A contact hit will crack at the weld point of the dissimilar metals and make a relatively undetectable crack. It will announce itself when the valve head FALLS OFF!
You can remove the cam from the cylinder head for the best look at your lifters. Windex says a bright light, but an incidental hit will make very small fractures and they can be difficult to see. If cracks are overlooked, the top of the lifter eventually falls off. It makes a mess of the lifter bore, causes additional valve/ piston contact.
I would not trust just peeking under the cam. This is the rule. If I can't do it, with the thousands of cylinder heads I have done, neither can you. Take the cam off and one-by-one, remove the cam followers, wiped them clean and inspected with a magnifying glass. If the lifters are PERFECT, go buy a lottery ticket, you lucky son-of-a-gun!
BUT... in these situations, we will not trust the timing belt. It and, of course, the tensioner MUST be replaced. We have seen the stud fracture from such an incident as this. You could fix all and repeat the incident with a bad tensioner stud! Don't risk it with a $2.50 part.
I disagree with jettawreck. It does matter how fast you are going. We have never seen a connecting rod bend if the engine was 'loping along', say 35mph or light cruising. But at highway speeds of 70mph, it would be very likely to bend rods. It's the 'straw driven into a tree' in a tornado scenario. I don't exactly know why, but the valves will hit the pistons and instead of the only the valve bending, the energy is transferred to the rod. Rarely do I see a high-speed hit where the rod is not bent.
PH, the crank rotates 2x for the cam rotating 1x.
Pull the cam shaft out. Inspect the cam followers. Any follower that is cracked or dented down is reason to pull the cylinder head.
If cam followers are dented down, the cylinder head must come off and the piston projection must be measured. Any piston properly measured, that is .005" lower than it's mates is excessive and shows that the rod is bent. Pay particular attention the piston under the most damaged cam followers. It sounds daunting to replace rods, but honestly, it is only about 3-4 hrs and roughly $150-$200 added to the project and it cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately, we are seeing some good fakes for the timing belt tensioners. The dead giveaway is a bearing without any manufacturer stamp on the seal or race. I hope you didn't get one of those.
If you need any additional help, feel free to email or call.
