Replacing head gasket

Hi,

A few days have passed, and I still am too nervous to start taking things off the engine… what with the apparently crunchy cam and all…

Now, all I want to do right now is try to replace the head gasket. The FSM includes an exploded view of the entire head (valves, spring, rocker arm, blah blah blah)… do I need to go that nuts in order to change the head gasket??? Looks like I can take the entire head off without disassembling it, is this true??

Ok, since I have never done anything other than taking parts that I can easily put back in (like, muffler, seats, struts, etc… basically, screw-comes-off, screw-goes-back-on, and use a block of wood or hammer to make things fit, type of deal), what can I do with the engine at home? Can I replace piston rings myself (suppose the head comes off as a piece)? What else can I do?? Timing-chain-related issues??

Oh, and this is with the engine inside the car… how do you test an engine outside of the car??? As in, how do you test compression?? (since it needs me to crank the engine with the key…)

Thank you.

follow fsm specs for loosening and tigtening bolts so you dont warp the head
and remember to mark your timing because things can quite easily get moved around
to test the compression just crank the engine by hooking a battery to the starter if its out of the car…

Changing the headgasket on a KA24E isnt very hard at all just very time consuming.

I vaguely remember some guy snapping his camshaft into a million pieces while trying to take it off or something… anyone know why that happened??

He didnt loosen all the bolts properly acording to the FSM and it snaped as he was removing it.