My wifes daily driver needs the head gasket replaced. I am wondering how long I should expect to spend on this and what advice anyone has to offer me?

 

Your average home mechanic should be able to complete this job in a weekend.

 

a day if you have done one before. 2-2.5 days if you have never done anything like this in the past. buddies and beers always helps!

 

To my thinking, this is a Saturday's work. It will take a couple hours to remove all the junk (taking pictures and labeling everything so you put it back together right).

Removing the head requires a cherry picker to do it without risking damage (mostly to you) but the job is fairly easy.

Cleaning up the deck and head mating surface is a job for those little die grinders with the 3M pads - makes short work of all the residue.

Re-installing the head is an hour's job, then a couple more for all the junk.

Then the last couple hours is for drinking beer. Personally...I recommend you don't start drinking until the hood is closed.

Pay attention to the torque routine. I just read a torque spec post that surprised me. It looked like with these I6 heads you torque down in three steps (that's normal), run the engine for 20 minutes (not normal), let it cool for two hours, then LOOSEN one of the bolts. That is weird.

 

Took my brother friend and me 3.5 hours to replace my 99s head gasket. But my friend and I have built many engines ranging from dirt bikes to 5.4 tritons.

The specs we had didnt say anything like that. It was 100 in 3 steps for all but 1 which was 110.

 

As stated most of a day if your are familiar around cars... Get a manual haynes or chiltons itll be a great investment. take your time youll be fine, if youre unsure ask the forum here and take pics before you start labels can get lost especially with all the dirt/grime in an engine bay so its nice to have a back up plan in place.

 

Here is where I saw it: https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f2/tor...er-head-51148/

Maybe I misread it...I wasn't all that intersted at the time...but the warmup, cool down, routine was different than anything I've ever done.

 

Thats for a 2.5 turbo diesel