Blown Head Gasket

[aslives]

I was driving my 1979 Fiat Spider into the mountains the other day when I head a strange rattling noise when accelerating. Pulled over and noticed a ton of vibration in the engine - almost lopsided. Drove home, barely, and called my mechanic. Had to get the car towed to the mechanic who thought it might have been the head gasket. Opening it up, here's what he found:



This is between 1 and 2 - apparently 3 and 4 were about to go as well. Replaced with a German head gasket and now we look like:



I guess I'm looking at another $1k in repairs...

[Flatspyder]

If you took it off, you can put it back together. Make sure u use grey sealant around the water port area of the gasket and that the surfaces are clean. Last time I just use a razor and couple of hours to clean the head surfaces. Torque specs are 56 for head bolts and 22 for cam tower bolts. After that you will just need to do timing and refilling fluids, burping radiator. Timing is not that hard, there are threads on that in the forum. I did my head gasket 2 weeks ago, I was just time consuming cost less than 250.

[aslives]

Well it turned out to take 7.5 hours to take it off, replace it and clear everything. I think it came out very nicely considering it hasn't been cleaned in who knows how long!

Take a look:

[So Cal Mark]

I hope your mechanic cures the detonation problem so you don't have a repeat failure. Did he use a straightedge to check the head for flatness?

[fiat218]

You pull the engine out to replace the head gasket, was that easier?

[bradartigue]

Looks like a cheap head gasket that wasn't torqued in the correct sequence. Your new gasket, torqued correctly and in the correct order, will last much longer.

And as someone noted, you can do this stuff yourself. I'd buy a nice torque wrench and some beer before I paid a mechanic $1k to do a head job on a FIAT. It's just too easy to do on these cars. You'll have $890 left over, enough to buy some gunk engine cleaner to clean up the rest of it once the head is back in place, and more beer.

[So Cal Mark]

kind of comparing apples to oranges; a DIYer slapping on a head gasket and a mechanic rebuilding a cylinder head.

[Martin124]

$1k to do a head job on a FIAT..

Moderator!!!

[BEEK]

different shops have different rates, i cannot say one is better than another, price is determined by demand and what people are willing to pay. at my shop you can get a fiat headgasket changed for less than 300.00, if you want the head completly rebuilt you can get that done for less than 600.00.

but as overhead and other costs change so will prices. i dont fault people for charging what ever they can get. if a customer is willing to pay the price then so be it.

[bradartigue]

Different parts of the country too...the shops here would charge you the $1k and just slap on the gasket.

[Tobi]

A few years ago a shop here gave me a bit off $1500