Blown Head Gasket

[4n70n1n0]

OK, so finally as we all await and fear the day of when the doctor, i mean mechanic comes to you and says you it's the head gasket.

Well to day it happened. He says it's not bad at all. i can drive it around for a bit, but he warned me that I need to replace the head gaskets and he gave me two options

ONE: Do the head gasket

or

TWO: Replace engine

He said that they are both around the same price and because my car has 126Kmiles on it he suggested a new engine

I didn't think that replacing the head gasket was $1500.

He's pretty honest and I don't think he is trying to rip me off, but it could be that he's not that experienced with the Subaru engines.

Now if I were to swap engines. I want a EJ20 off of a 02 WRX, but I will research this on the swap thread ^_^

Please help me out. I can't do the HG myself and I don't want to spend 1500 dollars to have someone do it for me and I really don't want another engine that once it reached 100K miles I'll be in this situation again

THANKS EVERYONE!

[Huffer]

HG is going to be $1500 in labor and parts from a retail outfit/dealer.

A used engine, installed, will be around the same price.

Buying a used 02 WRX engine, and having it wired up with the right sensors etc, is going to be A LOT more than $1500.

[d1giPhux]

yeah, $1500 isnt too bad of a price.. when i snapped the timing belt on mine, i had them rebuild the engine with all new seals, HG's.. etc.. etc. It cost me like $700 in parts (gaskets and such) which i bought online because subaru wanted about $1000 for the parts.. and then the labor was somewhere around $1800. So if that includes parts and labor.. its not a bad price at all.

[4n70n1n0]

SHIT! Yeah, it's 1500 parts and labor.
I thought it was not true. FUCK!

Man, I thought it would be at the most 1000

DAMN! I don't have $1500

Yeah, I was looking into the WRX swap and it's tooooo big of a headache

WOW! I do not have 1500 to spare. OMG!

Well I might just have to bite the fucking bullet and do it

I have a little bit of time, so I can search the parts for cheaper

(I apologize for the profanity)

[WinterKnoll]

Yeppp, I found myself in the same position earlier this year, just had to bite it and have the HG's fixed. I think I paid around $1800 for the HG job, but I needed a few other things done too at the same time.

[Huffer]

If the engine has only 100k on it, just have the HG's replaced with the newer gaskets, and get them to ensure the block & head surfaces are flat.

Shoot if you took it to the right place they could even do a mild port n polish on the heads for better flow.

[d1giPhux]

yeah.. you might be able to find some cheaper places to do it as well.. i think east coast swappers does DOHC headgaskets for like $800 or so.. so the parts would be like another $200-250 + $800 labor.

[4n70n1n0]

Yeah, I think I'm going to see if I can just do the job on this current engine. I was thinking about the mild port and polish on the heads would be nice, but I don't know if the shop will do it. We'll see. Now I have to come up with the money.

Question:
Would I have any problem if I replace my engine with a Phase II EJ25 from a GC or BE ?

[Huffer]

Well for one thing, those engines are SOHC... so they won't work with your ECU.

But - if you used a SOHC short block and put your DOHC heads on them, you'd have a much higher compression ratio of about 11.1:1, instead of the 10:1 the DOHC engine has. You might have to run 89 octane, but you'd notice a little more pep.

[4n70n1n0]

I had a felling they were, but never wasn't sure. DAMN! Guess I'll have to have my headgasket replaced