lifters and cam question

Hi All,

I have been cleaning up my cylinder head to put back on my 95. I know I should shell out the money for a rebuilt, but I'm broke and would rather spend the money on a rebuilt or low mileage engine later.

I want to know about removing the cam from the head. Can I take it out without creating a lot of work for myself. Haynes talks about journal measurements. I don't know anything about this. I just want to be able to clean up the head a bit better, and get the distributor off at the same time so I can clean and check for a suspected leak.

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8703/1006041kl0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/1006041kl0.jpg/1/w640.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img220/1006041kl0.jpg/1/)

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/5936/1006042pz2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/1006042pz2.jpg/1/w640.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img149/1006042pz2.jpg/1/)

Jai

You've come this far, you may as well go the rest of the way. Pull the distributor, take the six bolts out and lift off the cam. It is that easy. After you break the bolts loose, loosen each bolt a couple turns at a time so the cam comes up evenly. The valve springs will push it up. If you go this far you should rent or borrow a valve spring compressor, pull the valves, and inspect them for wear. If they look good, lap them in before you reinstall them. Inspect the lapping mark and see how well they mate. When reinstalling them put new valve seals in. You'll be kicking yourself if you put this all back together again and you start burning oil from a bad seal, or even worse have a burned valve after 100 miles. My experiences with burned valves is, they don't burn out slow, they go from good to bad in 20 miles. Seals should come with you head gasket set. It looks like you're trying to do it right, so do it right. If money isn't too bad for you, take it to a machine shop. Don't forget to check the head gasket alignment at the oil drain hole . Good luck.