I didn't start taking pictures till after I got a good chunk of the upper portion of the engine apart. I started the pictures here, I have the valve covers off, the cam gears off and the intake off. The center of the engine is open all the time, you can see sand and grit from time that got in there. It's also hard to tell but there wasn't much carbon buildup on the ports at all and the valves were in perfect condition. This is at 120k miles. (I put on another 50k since I did this job)

This is at the same stage but at the side. You can actually see the port for cylinder #1 has extremely little carbon on it, you can actually see the metal. Also notice the heads, I didn't do any cleaning till after I took everything off.

Here I have the heads off the engine and I took a close up shot. Cylinder 1 is at top dead center. You can see the exaust pipe coming up and the wire hanging over that is a ground wire. The two black hoses on the upper left are the two header hoses. You can see how the anti-freeze flows around each cylinder. The cylinder on the far left (#3) is the one with the blown portion of headgasket. You can also notice two small metal things in the oil passageways. Those were some kind of pressure valves, I had to replace the O-rings on them that sealed them in there. They were in very good shape.

Spare parts anyone? hehe... This was pretty much all the parts taken off to get to the head gaskets, minus the heads. Let's see if I can name everything properly from left to right (did this job back in May 2000). Valve cover, Fuel injector covers, wire harness, battery mount, fuse box, coolant overflow bottle, wire harness covers, ignition coiles, cam gears, fuel filter, throttle body cover, horn, fuel line (from filter to injectors) intake manifold, intake, strut bar, cam gear covers, coolant pipe (impact wrench in there, hehe), the fuel injectors are still on the rails mounted on the intake manifold along with the throttle body... no need to take those apart. I am not sure what that metal peice in the lower right corner is .. can't remember for the life of me...

Here is a nice shot of the heads just after I took them off the car. The exhaust manifolds are still attached to the heads at this point. I took them off to port them each. They weigh quite a bit each, at least 10 - 15lbs a manifold. If you notice that $#@%$@ pipe on the left manifold... that pipe was an unbelievable pain in the ass to get off the intake and I ended up shredding my hands up. You can also see the wire for the oxygen sensor on the right head coming out from below it.

The root of my problems. The bad head gasket. It was cylinder #3 where the problem developed. If you look closely you can see the two anti-freeze holes and where the left one broke over into the oil passage. In the next head gasket picture (at the end of the roll) you see the other side and can distinctly see where compression was escaping into the anti-freeze passage which caused it to burst into the oil.

This is the first shot I took after I got the heads back on. It came out blury, as you can tell, so I have the shot after this as well.

Here I am putting the engine back together. Same as the earlier pictures but you can see the ported and polished intake ports :) Plus while I had it apart I cleaned up the engine bay in hard to reach places when the rest of the engine is there.

This is a nice shot. Again, putting the engine back together. Valve covers are on and cam gears are on. Everything is coming together nicely with no problems as of yet. I also took the time to clean everything as I put pieces back on. Along with painting a few items while I had them apart.