I finally took apart my engine. I am cleaning it up and taking it to an engine shop today. Hopefully "Reinstallation is reverse of removal" is adequate instruction for me, even though six pages of instructions for removal weren't.
I am somewhat afraid of how much time I spent trying to figure out different details they left out. I could not remove the intake manifold completely and I did not want to force it, fearing that I would break something.
Then someone in a video said to not worry about that, you can slide the head out of the intake manifold.
Nice!
I think that Old School Funk has three videos about resurfacing your own cylinder head. In the first one, he glued sandpaper to a glass table, and moved the head across it for forty-five minutes. In the second he made sanding blocks, and in the third, he made sanding blocks, sprayed both the sanding blocks and cylinder head with WD40, and after a minute or two of sanding, he hosed off the blocks.
He says this method takes five to eight minutes:
I am concerned that it would not sand evenly, although I found dozens of comments on-line that this works adequately for them. Some even claim that Subaru mechanics do this instead of sending it to a machine shop.
Have any of you tried this? Would you?
Have any of you used his method to remove the cylinder head without removing the timing belt? If not, would you?
I thought that it was weird that he fastened the broomstick to the side of the timing belt sprocket. I think that would move more than attaching it to the top, and I am concerned that you need to have the wire tight, but if you stress wire too much, it fails.
Another guy said he had replaced at least thirty Civic head gaskets in the past year and he never had any problems just removing the timing belt and sprocket and simply setting it aside.
As long as you mark it first, you can put everything back properly, right?
Finally, a word from ChrisFix about replacing winter air (in your tires) with summer air!