Chrysler Repair: 1998 stratus head gasket oil leak, head gasket leak, head bolts

Question
My Stratus leaks 1qt. of oil per week.It's been diagnosed as a head gasket leak to the tune of 1000.00 dollars. I'd like to try it myself and would like to know the steps involved and any shortcuts/professional tips that might make this an easier job. A gas station mechanic told me the auto techs do this job daily on the 2.4 Liter engines,and that they just lift the head up,slide out the old gasket and slide in a new one. The car has never overheated and has 70k miles.I don't think the head is warped. Thanks for your advise. Jay  Gaver55@juno.com

Answer
Hi Jay,
That is an interesting situation. I was unaware that you can have an oil leak of that size without also having a cooling system leak. Does the oil leak to the external surface of the engine only? Or into the cylinders?
On the job itself, I looked in my '96 Chrysler shop manual and it appears to be a bit more of a job than the mechanic told you. I would be very leary of his suggested approach because you would be working with a head-block interface that hadn't been cleaned so I think the potential for a continuing leak would be quite high.
I do have one idea that you might want to try: I have had some success with merely re-torqueing down the head bolts for curing light head gasket water leaks. I usually loosen the head bolts in the reverse order of tightening to about one level below the 3rd stage torqueing (but never totally release the tension on any bolt) then retighten the bolts to the third level and then the extra 1/4 turn as normal with the Chrysler system. It may be that you can avoid the job entirely if the situation is due to an uneven torqueing of your present set of bolts. If it doesn't work then I would do the complete head removal so you can clean away all the crud that has no doubt been built up by the current leak.
Do you have a Chrysler shop manual for the 2.4L engine? If not let me know and I'll copy the pages about removing the cylinder head and postal mail them to you.
Roland