Does burning oil =head gasket?
 

I hear a lot of people saying that burning oil can be "many" things, but it's usually down to the head gasket correct? I just wanted to check with some people in the know. I had admit that I had neglected my car a bit, but it had only been about 3k miles since the oil change and I realized that the car had no oil in it, had to empty 2 bottles into the car to get the oil up to the normal level. So the car seems to be burning copious amounts of oil. Oh and there was some smoke coming from the head/exhaust manifold not too long ago.

Is a head gasket something that an idiot (me) could do? Or is it really complicated? I get the part about taking off the head, but replacing the timing belt seems like a very easy thing to get wrong. I may do this while putting on my turbo in a week or so as the exhaust manifold will be off anyways.

For pulling the head you shouldn't have to take the t-belt ALL the way off, just put the #1 cyl @ TDC and make sure the marks line up before you slip the belt back on. If you can read instructions you ought to be able to handle it.

could be the valve seals, if you see some blue in the exhaust on startup.

Koto the chances of the stuff linning up are pretty slim. Rechecking the Tbelt on reinstall is a good safety measure in my opinion. Head and Tbelt are not that hard just read up on it at m.net, etc. And ask us if you run into specific problems. Do you have a haynes book or other manual?

Yeah I wouldn't crank it without double-checking first, just saying it'd be pretty difficult to have it wayyyy off.

if you do a leakdown you can pinpoint the exact failure.

+1 for Braineack

Ya I was thinking about doing one of those... Come to think of it I probably should.

I know that the compression testers are pretty cheap, but is that something that a local shop could do for cheap as well? Do many shops have those electronic compression diagnostic things?

Oh and I have a repair manual, but forgot for a while, my bad.