Hate to be the bearer of not great news here: Replacing a head gasket is feasible for a non mechanic but probably not as a first job. It’s going to take removing a lot of hoses, wires, and fasteners, torque specs and torque wrenches, and if done wrong things could become more expensive. They are correct that the engine is on borrowed time if you keep driving it. Can you share the make, model, and engine so we can get a little more specific?

There’s usually one head gasket, replacing it involves taking the engine apart. At least in half. Still seems like a bit of a high quote but I’m not well versed there.

Replacing head gaskets is almost all labor, and depending on your car 3-4k could definetly be a reasonable price. If it’s a small leak, you could try some head gasket sealer as a temporary fix.

Part of why it seems like it might be a ripoff is that I can find the parts (according to my completely uneducated and untrained figuring) on autozone.com for like 250 bucks.

Get a quote that tells you the separate prices for parts and labor. If the labor cost is doable, ask if you can provide your own parts.

What is the make and model of the car? I can try to see what’s involved. I have a similar car situation and try to fix as much as I can myself. If there is that much of a disparity between the cost of the parts and what the mechanic is quoting, that usually is an indication that most of the cost is labor, which means it takes a lot of time and work to do the repair. This is quite common with a lot of coolant stuff as the coolant lines/radiator would need to be drained and then often a lot of surrounding stuff under the hood needs to be taken out to get at the broken stuff.

I’ve done home mechanic work up to timing belt changes, but a head gasket is where I would throw in the towel. If you haven’t done similar work on a car before, you’ll probably get overwhelmed and risk taking it apart and not being able to get it back together again. The price sounds about right unfortunately; you could maybe “find a guy” would do it for ~$1-2k but with no guarantee of quality or money back. You can’t sell a car in California with a check engine light or without smog, so you’re really up a creek there. The state might have a program where they pay you $1-1.5k to retire the car.

That’s a little on the high side but not far off. If you had like a Subaru or something that’s a pain in the ass to work on then I’d understand.

Shop around a little, but more important than price is quality. A head gasket is the part that allows the two halves of the engine to seal up and contain explosions as well as correctly conduct oil and coolant to where they each need to be. It’s an important part and replacing it will have at the very least the whole ass engine took apart.

So make sure you trust the people doing the work and keep an eye on your coolant while you’re going around getting quotes.

Long term? You gotta have a car, and if you can only have one it needs to be newer and in better shape. If you have to have old cars, you gotta have two so you can not be fucked when one goes down.

You know if you can have a second 20 year old car. If you can’t, try to climb the years ladder a little once this one’s repair is paid off.

B: Some head gaskets are hard, some are easy. Depends on the car. For instance here’s a guy doing a head gasket in a parking lot. But some cars really have the engine crammed in there. If you have some general mechanical aptitude, ability to follow instructions, and you are able to find a service manual for your car - it is worth spending actual money for this if you can’t find one for free, it’ll give you the step by step of how to do this repair - it might be worth scoping this out. You are operating at a disadvantage because it looks like you have like a “normal” car that doesn’t have enthusiast forums that can help you through it. I would expect this job to take a noob at least two full workdays, but you might realize that you need parts or something midway through and have to wait for shipping. The bigger the job, the more likely you realize you need to buy a part or tool midway through. Budget to have the car out of commission for a week.

Additional note - sometimes head gaskets just fail on their own, but sometimes they fail because, e.g., the engine overheats and warps the block. Once it’s open, a mechanic will hopefully do some investigation to figure out why it failed to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

C: It could be fun to do this yourself but you should strongly consider selling the car and buying another one. I know that’s tough in CA with the smog regulations; here in Chicago sometimes flippers will buy a car and not register it so you might find a buyer like that who doesn’t care if it can pass smog right away. If you sell the car and buy another one, I strongly suggest doing both via private sale, Facebook marketplace or craigslist. Better prices than dealer trade-ins because there’s no middleman. The downside is it takes more of your time to do the sales. Around here you can get a beater car for like $1500 and you’d probably get like $800 for the Suzuki. That would be a lot cheaper than paying for the repair.

D: Figure out if this is actually going to break the car or if you can ignore it. Head gaskets can fail in several different places. If it’s leaking coolant or oil to the outside, who cares just top up the coolant or oil and go about your day. If it’s leaking coolant into the oil, the contaminated oil will not lubricate effectively and you’ll fuck up the engine by driving on it. Etc etc.

Shop around. I’m in one of the most expensive areas of the country and I just got a shitton of work done on my car for 1500. I don’t know how replacing a gasket compares to the work I needed done, but 3-4k sounds like a lot. Though I’m also pretty sure my place undercharges me because I know them.

It can’t hurt to shop around though. If everyone gives you the same price then I guess that’s what it is, and you can decide what to do from there. Just go in a couple places and ask for an estimate.

did they tell you what the code was exactly? I’m struggling to figure out what code would be thrown for a minor head gasket leak on a 2003 vehicle… Misfire code would have to be a pretty bad leak, and low coolant idk, seems like a 2003 wouldn’t even have a sensor for that, I know cars I’ve owned didn’t. It’s possible they’re bullshitting you, or that they’re telling the truth but the code is unrelated.

Whatever it is, I would bet you could get the code to go away long enough to pass smog, though I’m not very familiar with CA rules. It would eventually get worse though. I would get them to give you the exact trouble codes it threw, or take it someplace else that will read them for free/cheap. Not knowing what those are really changes my answer

As far as doing it yourself: it’s a big job but with enough time and tools and patience and shit you probably could. The thing that will drive up the cost/PITA factor even more though, is that if you’re doing the head gasket you really should take the head to a machine shop to get milled perfectly flat again, to give it the best possible chance of lasting as long as possible. The last time I did this, I ended up having shot valves in the head that had to be replaced as well (also a suzuki coincidentally), but yours probably aren’t that bad.

If you were in the rust belt I’d be telling you to consider throwing in the towel on the car, but in CA its more likely to be worth fixing, as it won’t rust out from under you in the next 2-5 years lol.

But I would HEAVILY encourage you to check for yourself what the codes are, get some second opinions, and look for signs of head gasket leaks (coolant in the cylinder will cause it the exhaust to have white smoke, coolant in the oil will make it lighter and more opaque like a milkshake, and probably leave a residue on the oil cap).

Either way I don’t think there’s much sense in throwing it away until/unless you have to.

Oh, and in addition to the retirement program another commenter mentioned, there is also a program where the state will pay up to $1200 towards an emissions related repair. Its a bureaucratic process and unclear if your repair would qualify but it seems like it would if it caused you to fail smog. I think you’d have to take it for the smog test and have it fail before you could apply for that. link: https://www.bar.ca.gov/consumer/consumer-assistance-program/index#otheroptions

Is there a D option to do some janky shit that will hold you over for a while using like silicone or jb weld? Nothing permanent but that will let you kick the can down the road and pass inspection. Asking the mechanics in the group.

Edit: here’s a quora thread with some info ranging from pour some special sealant into it to it’s not so bad and you can do it with a friend

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-easiest-and-cheapest-way-to-fix-a-cracked-head-gasket

Edit: @AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net it looks like pour in head gasket sealer might be your option D

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q3_kDiQb7lE&feature=youtu.be

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Gotta agree with what I see as the general sentiment here and recommend option C. This is a major repair job.