Topic: New Motor or New Head Gasket??

[JoeShmo65]

im looking at this truck that i am hopfully getting the only thing is it has a blown head gasket  i was reading around and saw some people say just rebuild the engine and some say just replace the head gasket, so i was wondering how much it would cost to rebuild the engine and wat u guys would say i should do any ideas would work thank you

[8D3TOY]

What do you hope to get out of a rebuild?  If you just want to get back on the road with minimal cost you could go with a used or one of the quickie rebuild places, my brother in law just got a 22re rebuilt/installed for $895 plus $300 core with a whopping 30 day warantee.  If you want to go all out you can look at what D.O.A. and LC engeneering have to offer with them you could hit $5k pretty easy.  I am sure some one will post up with some low buck solutions,you will know more when you get it and pull the head.

[JoeShmo65 [OP]]

ya true the guy said it blew and he stopped driving it right away but he says coolent is leaking into the combustion chamber :S so im not sure how bad that could be hopfully going to go look at it soon so ill know the full extent

[highridin4x4]

You need to get that cyl. head off so you can get the water out before it rusts the ring to the cyl. wall. How many miles are on the truck? Has it been rebuilt or had head gasket replaced. I did rebuild my 22RE and it cost around 1000 parts and machine work
and I assembled it and instaled myself. Since overhaul it has overheaded and blew the head gasket so I replaced it and engine ran fine. I had around 60,000 miles on engine before head gasket blew.

[PetaSux]

I rebuilt my engine completely for 300, but didn't do any machine shop work.  Its gone strong now for 30,000 miles. I figured for the 300 bucks it will go until I have the money for a new engine with LC innards. The milage on the engine makes the difference between just doing the head gasket, and doing the whole engine. Mine had 325k on it, so it was an easy decision.

[Tallchevy]

The guy is trying to sell his truck. Do you know him? Do you trust him? If you don't know what actually happened to the engine just rebuild it, your half way there. When you pull the head, pop the pistons out & rebuild it. I bought a truck & the guy said he just replaced the head gasket & couldn't get it to run. I did a compression test & found 2 bad cylinders. When I pulled the head the valves were bent. I decided to rebuild it so when I checked the cylinders I also found that the engine was bored 20 over & #3 cylinder was cut wrong & the block was junk. I replaced the block & had the head checked for cracks, & replaced the valves. Total cost was around $500, $250 for the machine shop & $250 for the parts & my free labor 

[JoeShmo65 [OP]]

well i ended up not getting it the guy told me he had it than called me the next day to tell me it had sold the night before >( well back to looking for a fixer up rig