Troubleshoot or Just Pull It?

I have a rather odd dilemma. So I’ve been plagued with 2 bad thrust bearing failures. The last one was minor so I just changed the bearings with the crank-in and changed my torque converter. I suspected it was ballooning or the torque converter pressures were too high. I have the engine in and running but I have a dead cylinder. Intake valve seat took some damage. I dropped a washer in the intake during the bearing change and turned the crank over by hand and wrecked it just right.

So I haven’t had much run time on the engine but I was really wanting to check my transmission and converter pressures before I pull the intake and head. Is there any chance of further damaging anything else by running the engine with a load to do these transmission checks? I have MPFI so I can just drop fuel to the dead cylinder so it wont wash out rings. I really just need to run up the engine to 2500 in gear.