can a motor with a blown headgasket be easily saved?

[blues14]

I just picked up a s13 coupe with 129k miles on it for 500 bucks because it has a blown headgasket. the motor runs ok, but obviously it overheats very quickly. my question is this........ can i change the head gasket, flush the motor and go on my way? I plan on doing a compression test on the motor, what should compression be on a 89 ka24e? thanks for the help. if not, is anybody selling a cheap good ka's?

[TheOne]

get the head checked for bad shape.......hope that its not warped.

[fallen180sx]

heres what you do.. pull the head off. scrape the old gasket off the head and the block.. send your head to a machinist and have them resurface it and you can have extra goodies like clean it up and such if you want.. then place the new hg on and put everything together. make sure you torque it back to factory settings or youll be wasting your time with this. then bam you should be fine.