I recently changed the headgasket, a big task by my standards, surely it was a good learning experience.
Just for fun I grooved the head little bit and so far have not noticed much difference or direct drive experience. I was expecting that atleast I will experience less pinging in heavy traffic if I do not change from 1st to 2nd gear soon enough. There is little improvement, if I let car move at idle in 2nd gear it will ping if I give gas little quickly , earlier may be it used to ping little more. Car surely runs smooth , idles smooth but not conclusive in my opinion.
The car is 1990 240DL at 243K miles, manual transmission with LH3.1

I had busted all the cam studs. I bought Craftsman 1/2 beam type torque wrench to do the job. A cheap AA wrench broke all the cam studs.

One head bolt was rusted so I changed it. The old gasket was almost intact. A good spring compressor is almost mandatory, 5' breaker bar with an 14mm impact socket was used, no bolt presented any problem.

So far so good. Thanks for your help.
Here are some photos

[url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/36775433@N04/[/url]

Regards,
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DD-1990 240 DL SW M47II FI 3.1 234 K miles