I just replaced my head gasket and realized I didn’t put the dowels back on the cylinder head. I used the head bolts to hang the gasket off of when putting the heads on and they seemed to go on right. Am I good to go or should I bite the bullet and replace the gasket again?
Depends on what type of gasket it is, MLS gaskets are a lot less forgiving than older composite gaskets. Take the head back off and inspect the gasket for damage. Either way I wouldn’t run the engine with no dowels, even slight misalignments can cause excessive cam/crankshaft wear or premature timing failure, etc, etc.