[njsteve]

The shop is actually an authorized GM medium duty repair center and they have been working on 6.5s for several decades so I have been following their advice. They verified that the heads were flat and good to go. They were rather amazed at the condition of the heads and the inside of the engine in general. Their advice was essentially: yeah, you could spend several thousand on new heads but you won't see much of an improvement in performance or reliability so why spend the extra money. Especially since the engine wasn't run and overheated from the blown head gasket, it was shut down immediately.

In addition to the new head gaskets and new head bolts, we are putting on a new water pump, vacuum pump, 2-1/2" crossover exhaust manifold pipe, and one new valve cover. The valve covers have no gaskets and use only silicone sealer - if the flange is bent from prying it off, replace it, especially if it is on the turbo side because it is no fun to chase oil leaks under all that turbo hardware. All the parts being replaced are the original 1995 components so after 18 years they deserve a break.