Head gasket

[Chad R]

 Just got the floors all done and planned on getting my 86 mj back on the road when a nice white cloud came out the tail pipe. Oil looks nice and milky now, oh joy!

  My Comanche is a 1986 2.5 automatic fuel injection with 197k.  my question is why I have the head off I plan on doing a valve job, valve seals is there anything else I should do why I have the head off or should check.

[eaglescout526]

You can take out your tappets and see how clean they are while you have the head off. Otherwise you have all the main bases covered for the job. 

[MontanaManche]

i just did the same on my 2.5, one thing i would do is make studs to align the head onto the block. if your using new bolts just cut the heads off the old ones or what i did is bought some bolts from ace that had the same threads  and cut the heads off, otherwise its a huge pain to get the head aligned without messing up the gasket. also having a friend to help put the head back on is a huge help, its heavy even for a 4 cylinder

[Chad R]

19 minutes ago, MontanaManche said:

i just did the same on my 2.5, one thing i would do is make studs to align the head onto the block. if your using new bolts just cut the heads off the old ones or what i did is bought some bolts from ace that had the same threads  and cut the heads off, otherwise its a huge pain to get the head aligned without messing up the gasket. also having a friend to help put the head back on is a huge help, its heavy even for a 4 cylinder

  I saw that on YouTube I did not realize the 2.5 did not have doll pins