MF35X Perkins Head

I am in the process of replacing as many gaskets as it is somewhat simple to do on my Perkins Deiesel. The main areas that were leaking were some oilfrom the weep hole and the head gasket

I just finished replacing the oil gaskets, and am hopeful it is not the seal. I plan on replacing the head gasket and ny other gaskets I can get to without splitting the tractor. I was losing a fair amount of fluids from the head gasket. The engine ran well, but was slow to start. Should I be concerned with anything more than making sure the head is flat on the bottom? I will look for obvious problems with the valves and block sleeves while the head is off, but am a rookie. Should I take it to a machine shop and if so in what state of disassembly should I take it, what would they do to it, and how bad would it hurt the wallet (in guesstimates). My main goal is to stop the leaks and have a reliable tractor to use once in a while for chores. Perhaps if I succeeded in stopping all the leaks I would consider paint, but I have a couple F-20's already in line for that.

Thanks as always for the advice.

In N. Tx. a machine shop would take your head and pop the valves out and give you an assessment for $25 or less; would probably do it while you stood there watching; just takes him a minute. If you had problems corrected, the inspection would be free. You can have a lot of head work done for $100 and since you have it off, and have an opportunity to correct a possible cause of hard starting I would not hesitate to have them look at it.

What you take to them is the head minus any adapters for water passages, thermostats and the like. They want the head, valves, springs, and keepers. Nothing else.

Mark

I looked in the yellow pages and there were only a couple shops listed, one of which listed that they do tractor engines, so I'll take it there (just got it off). As I live in Ann Arbor, MI where nothing is cheap I'll just hope for the best.

The valves in one cylinder were blacker and had more build up on them than the others. All the chrome sleeves looked great. There was a break in the headgasket, but not along the edges. The valve cover gasket was in bad shape. Everything else has looked good so far. I'll start cleaning everything tomorrow in prep for the new gaskets. Tempted to tear it apart a little more to get some paint on it (not a "paint job"), but I'll probably resist.

Thanks again.