There are a couple of valve job threads floating around right now, but I didn't want to pollute them. I did read the thread about doing valve guide seal replacements on the 3.5L 24v engine by Mad Scientist, which has been very informative.

My "new" truck is a 1990 LWB 3.0L 12v. I bought it from a guy who said that it had a blown head gasket and had been sitting for 5 years. (The registration and inspection stickers expired in 2003, so it may have been sitting even longer.) He had already started tearing the engine apart, had the plenum and intake off already, so I just continued what he had started.

Now I've got the heads off and am ready to get them cleaned up, machined and back in. My local machine shop quoted me something like: $55 to clean and machine each head, $60 to pressure test each and then $110 to do a valve job on each; about $450 for the whole job. Not so much that I'm cheap ;-) as I'm hoping to learn something, I'm wondering how much of this I can/should do myself?

How can I tell how much work the valves really need? (Vehicle has about 144k miles on it.) When I pulled the heads, it wasn't obvious that it had in fact blown a head gasket. From just viewing them, it doesn't look like the valves are in particularly bad shape, not that I would necessarily know what to look for though...

My questions are:

-How can I tell what really needs to be done? Besides replacing the valve stem seals and maybe cleaning the lifters, what else should I consider doing?

-I assume that I'll need the shop to at least machine the heads for me. The pressure test is to look for cracks? Does it also tell me what kind of state the valves are in? This is something I must/should pay to have done?

-What's the appropriate order here: Do the valve job first and then have the machine work done or vice-versa?

Any other advice would be appreciated!

thanks,
steve