Finally got around to working on this thing again today. . . . .and found out several interesting things!
1. The head gasket had failed between a coolant passage and the edge of the block. The 'channel' in the gasket was also moving back towards the adjacent combustion chamber. Probably happened when the car overheated one night after the fan belt broke. . . . .and my wife drove it 18 miles home! This happened about 3-4 months before we noticed the coolant leak. (My fault for not checking the condition of the fan belts before putting the car into service)
2. The inner fender is RIGHT in the way of getting to the lower timing belt cover, adjusters, etc. (at least it appears that way to me. I can tell the belt has been replaced (car has 170,000 miles on it, and the belt looks like new, and the upper cover has a groove where a flapping belt tore it up some time ago). I marked everything and carefully pried the belt off of the cam gears, and hope to carefully pry it back on when its time to reassemble (waiting on new heater hoses now). Has anyone else successfully pulled that off?
3. Could someone with a 1991 XR2 possible take a few pictures of vacuum hose routing and post them? I've got idle problems, and I suspect that some of those hoses (especially the half dozen or so going to the very top of the throttle plenum) may have been misrouted from the get go.
Thanks, everyone for all of your help and comments. Rocketman was right: he said in a different thread that head removal is 'very invasive' on these cars. I agree!