Questions about head gasket repair

I have a '95 Tacoma with the V6, and have recently confirmed a coolant leak into at least one of my cylinders (brown goo in the coolant, white steam in the exhaust, bubbly steam sounds from my heater core, all of the classic symptoms).

I'm wondering what I'm likely to find when I pull the heads off, and also if there is any other work I should be doing while the heads are off, other than resurfacing the heads. With 200K on the engine, what is the likelihood that it will need more serous valve or ring work? And is it possible that the mating surfaces on the engine block will also be bad? What am I getting myself into?

 

It all depends on if it was over heated, if so
you might have cracked heads , you will not know till you open it up, My head gasket went out at 489,000 miles

 

If the temperature gauge is any indication, it never overheated so hopefully I won't have to deal with that.

What are the chances that the mating surfaces on the cylinder heads will be warped? Is that less common?

 

Have them pressure tested and surfaced.
They can crack on #3 I believe. You'll wanna know.

 

The heads are aluminum and the block is cast iron, so definitely have them checked To be safe,
Typically blown head gaskets come from
the engine getting over heated.

 

It's not always just overheating, but 90% of the time that's the case. I've seen pinhole leaks from a coolant tube to piston across the gasket, cracked heads, cracks in block, warped heads. You should be anal as hell about scraping and buffing the engine block head if you don't want to take it out for resurfacing. When I say anal, you want that portion of the work done well, and it's going to take some serious patience. Razor blades, angled die grinder, 3m pads, and a very consistent motion so you don't work a section lower than any other spot.

You'll be knee deep in the motor so there's no shortage of items to replace if you have the budget while it's all open. Timing belt/Water pump, new seals for everything you open, injectors tested/cleaned or replaced, checking valves and seals, valve guide check, the list goes on and on.

Depending on your miles, sometimes if you find a low mileage engine to swap, it's a winner. Just food for thought once you price out your time, tools, machine shop time and $. A lot of machine shops around here have a 2-3 week wait list- if not longer.