I took off my cylinder head to see if I could get it refurbished, but I don’t think I’m going to do it anymore. The head gasket that was on my 1999 2.5 seems like it doesn’t match up exactly. As you can see from the pictures the coolant passages are all crusty, but 2 or 3 of the passages are blocked completely. In one of them you can see all of the dried coolant in them and some of them being completely clean. Were the holes supposed to be punched out or something?
I was made aware by my friend that I bought the truck from that while his granddads business had it it got totaled Bc it got “squished” in the front end and said the engine had work done. I don’t know if the gasket is oem or not or what’s up with it.
I was also wondering what a trustworthy website to buy another 2.5 engine from woildn be. The body and trans have 146k miles on it and it was my first truck so I would like to try and keep it.
I bought it from him back in the summer of 2016 and the coolant looked like me after Taco Bell so I flushed it out and put new coolant in, but it went back to the pudding like state a while later.

 

Nothing wrong with the gasket. That is how they are. It is a way to control the flow of coolant. I would be more worried about the rust in #4 cylinder!

 

One way u can tell if u have a head gasket problem is looking under the oil fill cap.
If u see a creamy white/beige color substance, that's coolant mixing with the oil.

Had that problem with only 60,000 miles on a New 2000 Dodge Durango I had with the 4.7 V8......wasn't running hot either.