How close am I when tearing into the top of the engine to accessing the headgasket on this engine? I have certain symptoms that lead me to believe I have a leaking headgasket and thought that it would be good to do all the work at the same time.

I've searched around here but can't seem to find any sort of write-up related to the headgasket.

BTW- Mine's already been done under warranty a few years ago, so I'd have to pay for it to be done again or do it myself.

 

Pulling the heads is a lot more involved then just the valve cover gaskets. You have to tear into the front of the engine as well as the exhaust manifolds and such. You can look up pulling the heads in the FSM here:

http://personal.utulsa.edu/~nathan-buchanan/93fsm/

 

That's what I needed to know! Thanks.

 

Here is a photo of my HG repair. It should give you some idea of just how involved this job is.

 

I would do a compression check first to verify a leaking HG then go from there.

 

How would the compression test indicate leaking, would it just have low compression on one or more cylinders or are there other indicators?

 

Yes it will have low compression in one or more of the cylinders. There are also other factors like a whitish substance on the inside of the oil cap, disappearing coolant, and a sweet smelling exhaust. It can cause the vehicle to run bad and hot but not necessarily.

Try searching. There are LOTS of threads on the 3.0 HG leak.

Good Luck

 

Several of those headgasket posts are mine.

The only headgasket symptom I'm having is an unexplained loss of coolant from the overflow tank, and it seems that my system builds pressure rather quickly. I had a shop do a block test, no exhaust gases in coolant or anything like that. They also couldn't find any external (hose) leaks. No mixture of fluids that I can tell, so at this point I'm looking for a coolant leak that allows the coolant to vaporize before hitting the ground, because I have no visible spots on the ground.