jd290, you actually wiped out the reservoir directly beneath your cam lobes?  That reservoir should have been full of oil.  Was the reservoir full of oil when you removed the head cover?

niceast, can you tell us all a little more regarding how you were able to remove your cylinder head without pulling the engine?  That would be some valuable info.  Please give some detail on how you did it.  Did you remove mount bolts and let the engine drop in the frame?  How did you get the head high enough to clear the right-rear cylinder stud?

Anyone else able to remove the cylinder head with the engine still in the frame?

" What do you think?"

I think you didn't have any oil pressure/oil flow to your top end.  That reservoir (I call it a "trough") should have been full of oil.  And there should have been oil all over everything up there.  Like a complete sloppy mess of oil all over everything.

The top end is pressure fed, not splash oil off the cam chain.  Oil enters the head cover here.

Each bearing has chamfers at the split line.  These chamfers are critical as they route pressurized oil off the bearings to the oil reservoir (trough) for the cam lobes and also to the center of the hollow camshaft.  The chamfers are shown here.

Sealant is a common problem with oil flow to the critical components in the head.  I can see from your photos that there was a heavy application of sealant.  See the heavy globs of sealant that were squeezed out from the head cover to cylinder head joint adjacent to the cam sprocket.

And the rocker arm follower pads sure look like they could have used a squirt or two.

Also, check the oil passages from the pump through the clutch cover and filter.  This old post provides info on the clutch cover oil passages.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1586363497

You must figure out why it wasn't getting oil to the top end.

Good luck,

Mike

So, the weather warmed up around here and I was able to pop off the clutch cover to find out why the motors top end grenaded. First thing I checked was the oil pump driven gear and sure enough it just spun freely. Very bad. (DragBikeMike, you called it when you said the top end was getting little or no pressurized oil.) Turns out the previous owner put the oil pump drive gear in backwards when he took the clutch apart.  The pin was still intact so I didn't have to go fishing for it inside the engine case. Surprisingly there was no obvious damage to the bottom end of the motor or cylinder bore from what I could see, so I took a chance and re-installed the the oil pump drive gear correctly, found a matching  head, cam and head cover on E-bay and bolted it all up. Sounds and rides great. Absolutely no unusual noises. Valve train is quiet when cold and slight ticking when hot.
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