for non-zero phaser actuation:
I just did a whole write up explaining what I meant but I realized it would amount to a non-issue so I deleted it.
What I was thinking would effectively turn into a super transient issue that would immediately correct itself as soon as you turned the crank. My thought was that the correlation of the phaser to cam position would be off permanently but the phaser’s spring would return that correlation back to zero degrees offset. Also, it wouldn't have the ability to produce any ill-effects even if you timed it with the phaser was at full actuation because the engine is designed to allow full actuation within the vvt scheme.
Sorry for worrying you
And as for knowing whether you bent a valve, I would wager a bet that you’re out of the woods on that front. You’d know about it. It would run like dogshit had you done it so if it’s running as good or better than before, that means you didn’t bend a valve in the process. If you really really wanted evidence that the valves are good you could run a compression test. BUT if you get a bad reading it just means you’ve got bad compression. You’d have to further diagnose the issue as a bent valve or something else.
As for air in the oil pump, once you got it to the point that the vehicle was reading oil pressure, youre home free after that. Definitely not advisable to do the full start up as there were definitely parts of your engine getting to know each other better than they ever should but if it came up shortly after startup you probably just donated a few atoms engine material. The reason you don’t want to start it without knowing that the oil pressure will be there is because of the speed and force from combustion on the components and the time delta it takes to get oil through all the passages and splashing around on the cams. Let’s say that the pressure never actually came up, then you’d be in a totally different situation.