Ok, I'm in the middle of pulling the car apart to fix my bad headgasket, but I have a few questions to make sure I don't mess anything up. Right now I'm at the point where I need to remove the cam gears from the camshafts. My question is....how do you keep the cam gears from spinning when you loosen that center bolt? The VFAQ says to use a special tool, but I know not everyone has/uses one of those? Is there some trick to jamming a screwdriver against the head somewhere to keep it from moving or something?

My other question is, will I be able to remove all the nuts from the ARP studs and lift the head off without having to remove the camshafts?

Thanks for the help guys. Hopefully I'll get the BoostedGS back on the road soon. :D

i used a 1/4" extention on my crower cams but im not sure if the stock cams have the same hole in them

yes, you can use the 1/4 inch extension to hold the cam still, or put a screwdriver through the cam gear into the hole where the timing cover bolts into..either way it will work. you should have broken the bolts loose while you had the timing belt on..but im sure thats not the best thing to do.

About removing the nuts while camshafts are in place, yes you can if you use a wobble extension. As fas as putting the head back on though, you might wanna have the camshafts out of there so you can accurately torque the nuts on the head studs.

Tony

you can take the arp head nuts off and pull the head with the cam shafts still there

Awesome! Thanks for the answers guys. I haven't been back to the garage yet to finish, but I'll be going tonight. Since I have been driving for a while with the leaking headgasket, I'm gonna bring the head down to the shop to have them make sure it isn't warped, but I'm still shooting for having it back on the road by next weekend!