This is a complete and
This is a complete and helpful article Peter. Those of us with older cars, who did our own repairs have done our share of head gasket repairs and replacements. As you mentioned, the repair steps really depend on how early you catch the gasket failure, and what damage is done. Older cork or paper gaskets can sometimes fail just from age, if regular maintenance is not done. The problem compounds if the owner ignores the dashboard warning lights because overheating can warp the engine head, and you can get mixing of oil and water, which can cause improper engine lubrication and other internal engine component failures. I burned a valve in my Honda CR-V at around 135K miles, and it ended up being far less expensive for me to swap out the motor from a low mileage wrecked CR-V instead of replacing the head at a dealership or shop. Some businesses even carry low mileage Japanese imported engines. Japan has a stringent bi-annual "Shaken" inspection, and often they will pull out a perfectly good motor at 40K-50K miles and replace it with a new engine. And you can get those low mileage, tested engines from local importers for a good price. I've bought two of those JDM engines for my Hondas over the years, but happily most of the time you can catch the head gasket failure before any serious damage occurs, and gasket replacement is far easier and cheaper to do.