Ok so we didn't get the used head after all. The salvage yard had the wrong one and no others in town.

I took the head off of the Civic yesterday. There wasn't much difficult about it but I'm not looking forward to messing with the timing belt with all that power steering and other junk (my VX has very little in the engine bay and when I did mine last time the motor was out of the car ).

Cylinder #1 was dry with a bunch of white power carbon type stuff. That is the cylinder that we've always had problems with. The spark plug threads were messed up and the plug doesn't go all the way in. I assume the powder and such was from incomplete burn. I cleaned it all up the best I could with light scraping and a vacume cleaner.

#2 had about 2 ounces of coolant in it.

#3 was dryer and the best of the 4, but not great.

#4 was wet as well but no pooling water.

There was black or dark areas on the head and sleave tops indicating to me that the head gasket was what failed. The car had been hot multiple times over the years from different problems and got the gastket. BTW, the inside timing belt cover by the cam pulley was melted really bad.

The head had a full vavle job done and I'm putting on a full gasket set and all four belts tomarrow.

The machine shop said they had to use an impact wrench to get #1 and #2 plugs out!!! They are helicoiling 3 of the 4 spark plug holes. Re-tapping the 4th. Cost for machine shop was $10/valve work, $25 cam labor, $35 clean and surface, $30/helicoil. = Looks like they'll want $310 when I pick it up in the morning.

The parts store said that there wasn't even a listing for the head bolts so I'll oil 'em and re-install them. I also got the NGK plugs for it.

I'll let you know how it runs when it's done...