My buddy has a 1989 rs and we believe he's got a blown headgasket since he's loosing coolant and oil and, when he starts it up after not driving for a while gets a lot of black smoke, then sometimes it blows whitish, (coolant). Now, I've never changed a headgasket and niether has he, so I was wondering how hard it is to do on this camaro? It looks like I could do it on my car if I really had to, but mine looks really simple, butI'd leave it for a pro just aswell. Anyhow, he doesn't have the cash to have it done proffesionally, so we're gonna have to attempt it. Any advice? It looks like it's a *****, but I always hear about how easy older domestics are to work on so I was thinking maybe it's not that bad. What's about the estimated time on it? If I had to guess I would say at least 6 hours just from looking at it.

 

I might be facing the same thing here soon. As far as difficulty, its not a tough job, but very labor intensive. The whole top of the engine has to come off. (Dist, carb, intake, exhaust, and everything bolted to said parts, and of course the heads themselves) A top end gasket set can be had for well under a hundred bucks, so it wont set you back much. But the time invested is what kills me......

 

What kind of potential problems can arrise with doing this on these motors? Anything special we need to do or watch out for, or somehthing that can be potentially tricky? i.e some bolts that like to break or something. Niether one of us are mechanics, so we'd be flying by wire so to speak, is one full 12 hour day enough time for a couple of non pros to figure this out, or should we look for a couple of days? Thanks, Ramsey.

 

If you never done it before, give yourself a few days, as you need to practically dismantle the top of the engine to do it. Make sure you have a torque wrench. Besides the gaskets, get a new set of head bolts. Also, gaskets blow fora reason, so have the heads rebuilt or at least resurfaced. If you have a warped head and keep using it, you will soon became a head gasket replacement expert.

 

Some stupid **** you will learn the hard way. Trust me...

Label your ignition wires.
Label 'Front' on your distributor.
Put all your bolts in different baggies. (ie valve cover bolts, intake bolts) This saves HUGE headaches...
Drain ALL your coolant from a drain plug or bottom of radiator. Coolant is messy stuff. Draining from the upper hose wont cut it.
PRE soak all your header/exhaust manifold bolts 2-3 days before with penetrant. (please listen to this one)
Allow yourself twice as much time to reassmble as the tear down took. You will get the heads torn off in a day, I promise. Putting everything back together takes twice as long...you have to torque stuff down, clean it up, figure out where it goes......Little crap like "does this hose go over or under this bracket" will eat up massive amounts of time.
And lastly....get a digital camera. Take 2-3 pics from every angle. Its like having your own Chiltons manual........

 

Thanks for all the advice. We will probably start taking on this taks some time next week. You guys have been very helpful.