An associate was just quoted $2K for replacing a head gasket on a '97 Neon.
That seems high to me. Is the job actually that hard?
Well it’s a pretty tough job for a shade tree mechanic, pretty involved but i think $2k is a little steep I would take it to a different mechanic and see what he/she quotes it at.
IANAM and don’t know anything about that particular car, but I know that getting similar work done on my Camry is very expensive because it involves a huge amount of work (dropping out the tranny, or some such thing) to be able to reach the rear engine seals.
Some cars are designed to make it easy for a mechanic to work on them, and some cars are designed to make it easy for the engineer to design them.
Who provided the quote? Dealers generally look up a repair in a book that tells them how many hours of labor to charge for a particular job, regardless of how long it actually takes a mechanic to do it.
My sister got suckered for about $3,500 for a gasket replacement. She could have had it done for about a third of the price. She should have asked the family for a good mechanic or shopped around a little.
Independent shop near downtown Akron.
Also, they offerred $500 for the vehicle if we wanted to sell it to them as scrap.
I had it done in 1991 on a 1985 Ford Escort for 1600.00- probably more than what the car was worth.
I work at a dodge dealer the labor is 850.00. Parts fpr 2.0 sohc are 130.00 dohc are 150.00. Labor is the same either way. Seems a tad out of line to me. An independant shop should be able to shave a little on the labor, probably the parts too.
Yeah i replaced the head gasket on my truck last week, the price of the actual gasket was $16.99 at O’reilly Auto parts.
I apologize, that quote was off.
I meant to say 3K
But seriously,
Call Saturn, at Chapel Hill off Howe Rd. Good people.
Since this seems to be a common problem with the Neon, I wonder if he might take it to Chrysler, complain, and hope he gets quoted much less?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a cheap head gasket before - they’re usually north of $100, in my experience. And how much was the bolt set? You did replace the head bolts, yes? It’s pretty common for those dudes to be one-time use only. And you sent the heads to an engine shop to be inspected for cracks and ground for plane if needed, right?
As another point of reference, I paid about $2500 for a head gasket job on a '93 Taurus about six years ago. There is a cubic metric crapload of work involved just to get at the heads, plus the outsourced charge for the engine shop to inspect the heads, and a shopping cart full of this-and-that things that ought to be replaced. As long as they’re out of the car, the labor to replace them is free, and why would you spend this much money to do a half-assed job and not spend the $65 to replace the water pump since it’s normally a $350 labor charge? And it will never, ever be this easy again to change the spark plugs.
All of this is to say that yes, head gaskets themselves are pretty cheap, but the labor costs and associated widgets will eat you alive.
Careful with that one. I had a car that I did that with, then saw it on the road not 2 months later being driven by one of the shop employees. :eek:
All told for new plugs, wires, oil, filter, headgasket, valve cover gasket, ignition control module, crankshaft sensor, and bolts i spent just a shade under $200, the heads weren’t cracked or warped, but had it of needed machining one of my buddies owns the local machine shop.
Good call.
Actually, shortly after purchase, these gaskets were replacing under warranty by the deal.
Replaced by the Dodge DEALER, that is.
Had a 97 Neon myself with a leaky head gasket.
Back story first: The 97 and early 98 Neons came equiped with poorly made gaskets. No one is quite sure what is wrong with then, but the new ones (mid-98 and on) relieve the problem. Because they were aware of this, Dodge offered a hefty discount to get the gasket replaced. Unfortunately for me and the OP, that discount has long since gone away.
For those Neon, getting to the headgasket is a bitch and a half. IIRC, you even need a special tool to get a pully out. Not an easy job and an assload of labor. If you do it, think about having them replace the water pump too.
Result, The HG problem was never much of a problem beyond adding oil. What happened was the car had been overheating for a while but I could never track down the problem. No air in the radiator, thermostat OK, fan works, water pump was check out 5000 miles ago. I decided to trade it in so my girlfriend can get a truck in Trinidad, CO. (long story) She leaves LA and got caught in stop and go traffic due to I15 construction at 2am Thursday. You guessed it - the car started to overheat and she couldn’t get over before the water pump let loose. I get up there and about 20 gallons of water later get it to a Victorville scrapyard.