So, this is where this new story starts.
After a visit in Belgium and a successful start over there, the buyer brought the Steel Blue to my little village next to the city of Delft




Good to go!

I knew that the head gasket was shot, so before getting the car to my garage I picked up a replacement head that was prepared in the mean time. This so i did not have to wait for skimming the head from the steel blue.
First: Dismanteling of the donor:
(don't mind the mess)

After removing all the bobs and bits, the head was ultrasonically cleaned, New valve stem guides installed and the valves were cleaned and the seats were polished so they move and close as new again.
Then it was time for the camshafts to receive a well earned overhaul. Not much to do here besides disassembly and ultrasonically clean them, as well as the bearing caps. The cams were visually painstakingly inspected and found to be good. Also after a mild (very mild!) polish the hardened outer layer appeared to be in good state, so they were ready to put on the head again.

Also the Lifters needed disassembly, cleaning, polishing and priming with fresh oil:

Don't mind the rusty bolts they are (quite literately) a paper weight

More pictures about this little job, that needs to be repeated 16 times! later
First it was now time to remove the head from the Steel blue. As most jobs, the devil is in the detail and a lot of jobs must be done before the head can be lifted.
Enough topics already on the forum concerning this

So: all the guts scooped out of the way!
Time to remove the rocker cover or what's it called

And the dreaded Engine Support, that came out easily with my custom tool (see the topic below this one for pictures of the tool)

But before anything else i needed to fix something.
Since everything is a one man operation here and a motor lift would not fit, and i needed a lift to place the head back (more control then just lift it in!)
The very complete, but tiny garage does not have room for a lift, not in height or footprint. So I had to come up with an alternative solution. Then my eyes noted the pile of old cambelt parts... This is the result! (needs painting though). As you can see my son is happy with it as well



Now that we have the proper tools: Time to lift the head!


Not hard to see where the gasket failed.

After a little cleaning:
(This is a real good time to change the oil filter as well, which I did).
Now would be a good time to drain the transmission oil & refill it again:


Looks just like new!

And Head Gasket in position:

And the donor head good to go:

It was time to use the lift again to put everything back in position.
New gaskets everywhere, and everything nicely cleaned off course!


Presto!

Enough for one night. More of this later!