when i say "based on my experience", i mean just that. I'm fairly new to these but it seems like more often than not the examples of bad gaskets equal more than just swapping it out. I definitely came into it thinking i could just swap the gaskets but quickly fell into a much deeper pit.

I straight edged mine once torn down and it was barely noticeable but the cylinder ring on the gasket had blown into the cylinder.(I bought the truck after this had happened so i have zero knowledge of what it went through when this happened but the kid was an idiot and i imagine he overheated it.) wasnt a giant concern as the machine shop was going to do a valve job regardless and would check them before proceeding.

I had planned on the machine shop just dipping everything, honing the cylinders(turned into boring) and doing 2 valve jobs but they quickly informed me that the heads wouldnt be true as is.
i could:
1. deck these heads and block or
2. deck the block and clean up the sludge filled JDM swap heads. They thought the original heads were the right bet after seeing the amount of sludge in the other heads.
(they also noted that they were very used to decking 5VZ heads with all of the early HG failures)

Now i think early detection is probably a different story and i very well may be a minority

not crazy, definitely doable just plan for hiccups and parts runs