head repair advice

[nuclearpenguin]

Long story short: Did timing belt, ordered wrong tensioner so we put the old tensioner back on, belt loosened up and bent all my intake valves about a week later. Took the head off, ordered a rebuilt one off of ebay. Installed the new head, one of the cam cap bolts broke off in the head, tried to get it out and only made a bad situation worse. Now the hole is pretty messed up so I'm calling the head scrap. Is there any reason why I can't take all of the hardware (valves/seals/guides/springs/retainers/etc) out of this head and put them into another used dsm head? Anything in particular I need to check on this other head before I put all of my hardware into it? Anything in particular I should watch during install? Is it pretty feasible for your average-joe mechanic to disassemble/reassemble a head like this or do I REALLY need to goto a machine shop? (Obviously I was bright enough to get the head off and honestly I feel pretty comfortable with reinstalling it, part to my assistance of DSMtuners.com and my Haynes )
I've read everything on vfaq and plymouthlaser.com and understand how to make my own valve spring compressor. I'm just curious if there's any particular problems I'll run into with uninstalling this brand new hardware and reinstalling it into a used head (that hasnt been serviced by a machine shop).

Thanks

 

[brute]

It's an average-joe mechanic type job. You just need to make sure the cams are lined up with each other. That will become easier to see when you put the cam gears on, as they have alignment dowels. Also make sure you have torque specs handy, and follow them religiously. Try to clean everything out (if you are doing everything yourself). You might want to look into getting a valve job at a machine shop. If the head is totally stripped, a vat cleaning and valve job would not be that much money.

I'm sure you already know this, but remember to get a top-end gasket set. And we're here if you have any more questions.

 

[nuclearpenguin]

It's an average-joe mechanic type job. You just need to make sure the cams are lined up with each other. That will become easier to see when you put the cam gears on, as they have alignment dowels. Also make sure you have torque specs handy, and follow them religiously. Try to clean everything out (if you are doing everything yourself). You might want to look into getting a valve job at a machine shop. If the head is totally stripped, a vat cleaning and valve job would not be that much money.

I'm sure you already know this, but remember to get a top-end gasket set. And we're here if you have any more questions.

Yeah, i had decided when this first happened to just rebuild the whole top end so i replaced every seal and gasket from the HG up and all the way out to the turbo and the TB so i'm good there

I had a local offer to get a bare but completely ported 1g head for $150 and the guy offered to switch out all my valves/seals/guides/etc for $50 more, so I think I may go with that. Thanks for the advice though

 

[GVR4592]

You can't reuse the seals, the guides will need probably need to be honed, and they might not even work. You'll need a complete valve job as well. I'd say to do it correctly it would cost at least $250-$300. Let see a picture of the cam cap bolt broken off in the head. Most times that kind of thing can be repaired.

 

[BISHILVR]

Valve guides cannot be re-used. Hopefully the bare head you get has good ones in it.

 

[nuclearpenguin]

Just to let you guys know, we ended up repairing the hole in that head. My machine shop "connection" did it. Almost 3 hours worth of work