Anyone (Disco Mike), know the dealer cost for a head gasket and valve job?

 

I think he said around $3,000.00 for the head gasket only... i would hate to see the bill after a valve job... i think i would throw up.....

 

Time to get to know your Rover, or find a good local shop...

Try to find a shop that is AAA approved, and has some credantials.

 

AAA approval is the last thing you need - all but meaningless. The good shops get business by word of mouth and could care less about the random jackass browsing the yellow pages.

Ask around, find a shop that folks trust and more so - are able to handle the task. There are not many head gasket jobs getting done these days unless its a performance shop. Engines just don't need head gaskets anymore.

Shops today would rather drop a short block in anyway. That way they are not liable for other issues that may arise from a slipped sleeve or cracked block.

A valve job is a valve job. A couple hundred at any machine shop. The garage would send out to one of these places anyway.

Best of Luck.

 

yes a dealer is around $3,000 for a head gasket job. that was the estimate they gave me on my D2. Time to find an indie mechanic or buy the kit yourself from AB read up on the job and give yourself a full weekend and hopefully an extra set of hands to do the job yourself.

 

First don't take it to a dealer, find a good small shop and have them do it for around $1600 and you do not do a valve jobs usually till close to 200,000 miles.
Make sure you also have new 8 mm plug wires installed at the same time.

 

I would argue LR shops see a huge amount of gasket work, and just about every Disco engine seems, in fact, to need gaskets at one point or another.

To the OP, one more vote for never going to the dealer. Spend some time finding who the local LR techs are and get more than one quote. It's pretty common work and they should know off hand how many hours they'll need. Talk to guys in local LR or off road clubs and see where they go for major repair work.

I was quoted just yesterday for head gasket and valve job at $1,800 at my independent Rover shop. '98 Disco I w/ 147k

 

That's if you can find a local indie LR shop. Again, not many shops around that do head gasket jobs outside of the performance realm. Even adding on the indie LR guys, it's still not a lot.

 

actually if the piston blew out of the engine, I would have the engine itself pressure checked for issues with coolant loss. Alot of those had issues with bad cylinder walls causing coolant to leak into the middle cylinders.

 

done...

It was easy and didn't cost me a dime (scrap from work was used to make the "kit").

BTW, the piston stayed in the engine, it didn't "blow out" of it.