So I've got a friend who's got a pretty nice blazer for sale.

It just got diagnosed as needing a head gasket. It's a 91 with about 130k on it.

Since she just bought a very nice Denali she just wants to dump it.

My question is this...

How hard is it to get the heads off one of these motors?

It looks like there is more than enough clearance around the power steering and heater core, but I don't want to buy it if I'm going to have to jump though hoops to pull the heads. I figure I'll just pull them both and have them rebuilt. No sense in just pulling one and just changing the gasket in my opinion.

Anyway, any gotcha's from somebody who's done it?

Thanks,

Daniel

 

I have never removed the heads on a blazers 350, but fortunately a chevy 350 is a chevy 350 and I have removed the heads on chevy 350s lol.

It should be a pretty straight forward process.

If you are still worried about possible clearance you could always go check a haynes or chilton manual.

 

I got a hold of an experienced post smog chevy guy today and he said it was cake... no clearance issues whatsoever.

Now I need to find a good shop to rebuild the heads!

I'll think I'll go pick up the Blazer tomorrow. I've got a curiously free Saturday coming up that would be perfect for yanking a set of heads from my new ride... :-)

Thanks,

Daniel

 

Before you go through all of the trouble of yanking the heads, do a compression check on all cylinders. It's possible it just has bad intake manifold gaskets. If you've got even compression on all cylinders, then you don't have head gasket trouble. If you find one or more quite a bit lower than the rest, squirt some oil through the spark plug hole of the affected cylinders and spin the motor over on the starter to let it even out into the rings and recheck compression. If it picks back up, then you have bad rings, if it doesn't, then it is either a blown head gasket or bad valve.

Now if there is coolant in a cylinder, then it is mostlikely a head gasket problem, however, the outside most cylinders can still have an intake manifold gasket failure that would allow coolant into the cylinder.

Hope this helps! Have fun with your new ride!