I am in the process of removing the head on my 22RE. I damaged the head gasket replacing the timing cover and need to replace it.
Is it possible to remove the head with the intake and exhaust manifolds attached to save a little time and effort?

 

Yep, you can leave the intake on it (just be sure to pull the 1/4" i.d. by-pass coolant hose and 180 degree coolant hose under the intake).

It's much easier to just pull the exhaust manifold off before, though. You can remove the 8 bolts that hold it to the head and remove the brace at the exhaust pipe brace to block and move it over a bit. No need to remove the manifold from the pipe. It'll hang far enough over to have plenty of room to pull the head off.

Enjoy!

 

To me, it made taking the head off and putting it back on easier to leave both manifolds on. Take the upper intake/plenum off, though.

 

Thought I might have trouble with the exhaust manifold and exhaust pipe bolts, 21 year old truck, never taken apart, but the nuts came off fairly easily(thank you PB Blaster). Got the plenum off, I see those water fittings, I'm going to take them off, pull the head and set it to the intake side of the engine so I don't have to take the intake manifold off or disconnect the wire harness under the truck. Why did they thread the wire harness through the intake manifold anyway?
Clean it up and install the new head gasket and head bolts. Hopefully, I won't snap any of the head bolts taking them out. I already made way too much work for myself by damaging the head gasket when I replaced the timing cover, I need things to go the other way from here on in.

 

Check out the Service Manual.
There's a section that tells you how to remove the head, the right way.
You end up leaving the exhaust manifold and the lower intake.
It's easier if you have instructions and do it the right way.
You might need a gasket kit.
I used engnbldr's gasket kit. Worked great. They were all there and then some.

 

Yep, got the Service Manual, there are some parts of the procedure that are a little vague and I am hoping to cut a few corners since there aren't any problems except for the head gasket I messed up, so I don't need to remove the head from the engine compartment, just lift it off the block so I can clean it up a little bit and put the new head gasket on.
Got the gasket kit for sure. Done many head R&Rs for valve jobs and engine rebuilds, this is my first 22RE head removal; all experienced mechanics have little tricks to save them time, I'll learn a few with this job. My buddy's 22RE Turbo has a blown head gasket, we are going to have to give that rig the full treatment, no shortcuts when something is blown.

 

A friend and I removed the head as a complete unit to redo the head gasket that had been done by a local garage.It had started leaking antifreeze behind the exhaust manifold. We pulled the hood and used a engine hoist to hold the head . The only thing that caused a problem was the wiring harness , but it was still high enough to work on.

 

i pulled the head on both my 22r's with the intake still attached. like said before, i'd pull the plenum. it's like 6 bolts to hold it on

 

So this sounds like what I need to do as well. I feel your pain. Just did a LC engineering dual row timing chain and didn't do a head gasket. Now it is leaking at the most front of the engine..