Today I put in another half a day and was able to finish pulling the head. Unhooking the wiring harness and pulling it through the intake manifold is by far the most frustrating part of this job. Plenty of carbon build up on the heads, but the cylinder walls look OK.
Here’s the gasket. Classic failure at the #6 cylinder:
Tomorrow I’ll make a call to a couple machine shops to see if I can get the head checked for warpage, cracks and have the valves done. I hope to have it back before next weekend. Parts should be here in the next couple days so in the mean time I’ll be scraping and cleaning the block.
I also plan to fix the leaky pan arches while I’ve got everything apart so that should keep me occupied until the head returns from the shop. I’ll try to update as I get a chance…