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Head Gasket Issues: Is it Worth the Trouble/$$$?? Please Help!
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Tara11
New User
Jan 5, 2009, 10:46 PM
Post #1 of 2
(1291 views)
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Head Gasket Issues: Is it Worth the Trouble/$$$?? Please Help!
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1999
Ford
Escort
99,443 miles
Okay, not sure of the engine size, but it's a 4 cyl. if that helps. So, my problem is this: heater core was leaking, took it in to get it checked out and fixed. After the shop fixed the heater core (which they are charging me $550 to do, everyone keeps telling me thats at least $100 too high), they tell me that the head gasket is blown and/or the head may be cracked and that the car is not driveable. This is what happened leading up to this: for the past couple weeks coolant was spraying through my heater. It progressively got worse. Then, on New Years eve, only 5 days ago, I drove it about 170 miles and the coolant was leaking so bad I had to wipe my windshield every 5 minutes. I get home and that was the only problem I thought it had. THEN, I try to drive it a couple days ago and I get the white smoke in the exhaust and I can't go a mile without it overheating. I filled it with anitfreeze and it had all leaked out by the time I took it to the shop a day ago. I forgot to tell the shop about the white smoke coming out of my exhaust because I thought that had to do with the heater core for some reason. After reading all the posts here I now know that it is indicitive of head gasket problems.
Now the shop is charging me the $550 for the heater core and saying that the head gasket and/or head (if it's cracked) would cost at least $1100 for the parts alone. Here are my questions:
1. Shouldn't the shop have noticed that the head gasket/head had issues with all the white smoke coming from the exhaust and are they scamming me by fixing the heater core first knowing that I would have to fix the head gasket as well?
2. Is it worth the money to fix this car? I put in a new clutch last year and now it has a new heater core. It's run well until this happened and never really gave me any problems until the clutch went out. I only paid $2000 for it and it is barely turning on 100,000 miles? I could scrape together the money if I needed to to fix it and I won't need a car for the next 4 months because I will be overseas. I just am having a really hard time wanting to pay $550 for a car a may scrap and even harder of a time paying $2000 total for it to be running again (approx. proce for the head gasket and the heater core which I already have to pay for anyways). One other thing, the previous owners put that Stop Leak stuff in it, perhaps to mask the probems it is facing now, should I worry about that causing problems later on down the line should I choose to fix it?
Thank you for your help! I'm REALLY confused about what I should do! 
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Jeff Norfolk
Enthusiast
Jan 6, 2009, 5:07 AM
Post #2 of 2
(1286 views)
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Re: Head Gasket Issues: Is it Worth the Trouble/$$$?? Please Help!
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Ok
1. No net necessarily. If a car has a bad leak (as you say it did) the leak will need to be fixed prior to any other leak inspections. Coolant leaks are like a leaky dam. The coolant will come out of a large leak until fixed. Then it will come out of the next largest leak or weak point. Most places will fix the large problem first.
2. Depends on if you want a car payment or another $2000 problem. I would fix this car if it were me. You already know what you have with it. If you buy another $2000 car you don't and you may be starting from scratch. Chances are that the head is fine unless you overheated the car badly(which you never mentioned). Most shops will say that prior to a head gasket repair just as a cya. And to prepair the customer if there is a problem in there. There is no way to tell until you get the head of and to a machine shop.
Jeff
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