I'm going into the belly of the beast tomm, and I was wondering if I could get some tips from you guys about what to look out for and make my life easier. When I do the head job, should I buy the whole felpro gasket set for like 130 bucks, or are there specific gaskets that I need to get, in order to do the job and spend a bit lesss money? Any info would be awsome....thanks guys.

 

anything?

 

Buy the whole kit. No sense in taking all apart and not doing the valve seals. Plus at least if you buy the whole kit you won't have to run back to the store cuz you forgot to get a gasket.

 

I bought the Fel Pro set and it includes pretty much every gasket you'll need for the entire engine, including fuel injector seals and oil filter adapter o-rings. Since you'll have the head off (making access to everything else a lot easier) I agree that you might as well get the entire kit.

The only gasket the Fel Pro kit doesn't come with is the "exhaust packing," which is that silvery o-ring that connects the exhaust manifold to the exhaust down pipe.

By the way, I changed the valve seals when doing my head job. I've never encountered this before, but getting the valve locks unseated took quite a bit of force. I wound up using an 8-inch C-clamp with a socket to unseat the locks, and once they popped used a regular over-the-valve spring compressor for everything else.

 

Good info guys, Thank you both.

 

Huh?


I got the head off today and am taking it to a machine shop to have everything swaped over/replaced on the new head, then I'm gonna get it all reinstalled...any idea on how long it will take the machine shop to switch everything over to the new head? What I mean is, will I get it back the same day...

 

Depends on the shop and how well you know them. I have a shop here in town that gives me priority(they have rebuilt everything for me in the past). probably take 2 days give or take depending on their work load

 

I am so confused, you took out the exhaust manifold, to do a head? The reason I am confused is that I have done a couple of them and never had to do that.

 

I suppose it's not mandatory to remove the exhaust manifold. If pulling the head, there are only two more nuts attaching the manifold to the vehicle so I figured I'd pull it out and clean up the nooks and crannies of the engine bay while I was in there.

 

Yeah, I can see that. A clean engine bay is a happy engine bay lol. But man, those are some *****. Exhaust bolt couplers are a pain in the ***, I never touch them if I don't have to those rusted just waiting to break bolts have kick me in the ***** before lol. Never done it on jeeps granted it is just like rear shock bolt on jeeps, scary.

 

Took the head in today, putting in new valves and everything. Picking it up saturday

 

That is the best plan.

Let us know how things go after the install.

 

New head is in, and everything is at factory specs. I never wanna do that again.