i recently bought a timing chain kit with steel guide from 'enginebuilder' (minus a couple syllables)
a couple mechanic friends of mine installed it for me, without removing the head. ...meaning they pulled the radiator and did the whole thing through the front that way. well when he got it all back together, a leak sprung up in the timing cover....seems to be warped, or cracked invisibly. anyways, i bought a new cover from the same website, but the friends that did the chain for me in the first place (who will be doing the new cover as well), suggested, after all of the work of doing the chain the first time, that i should just go ahead and get a new head gasket and valve seals and all that good stuff, because he (the one who did most of the work) thinks that it would be worth the extra trouble, to save the trouble of working in such a crampt area by leaving the head on. i guess the reason he didnt say that when we did the chain in the first place, is he didnt know how much work it was going to be, even without removing the head. he says we could do head gasket and all in roughly the same ammount of time and for hopefully not too much more money. the 22re has about 125k on it...no signs of head gasket worries now, but maybe i should just go for it...what do you think?

and many people have suggested in various forums that fel-pro (?) gaskets for the 22re are crap, and to get a toyota gasket. any comments on this? and on the gasket set available at engnbldr.com?

 

First problem was they didnt pull the head. There is a dowel pin from the head into the timing cover. it can be done without pulling the head, but you run a good risk of blowing a HG real soon afterwords. Do the HG when you do the chain or timing cover.

Fel-Pro makes excellent gaskets, I would say as good as OEM. I just orderd all my parts for a timing chain and HG from engnbldr.com I also used whatever gaskets he sells as I have never heard a complaint. And it was only 102 bucks for everything to the door.