havocx7

i recently found that the gasket heads were blown on my '95 3.4L. A mechanic said that a rebuild might be necessary. He quoted me about $3k but that sounds way over priced even for labor. does anyone have any ideas or advice?

crasher88

3K is about right for a decent rebuild, and good rebuilt engien from Jasper is about that price, not including labor. If you blew a head gasket it might be just that and can easily be fixed by just pulling the heads and replacing the head gaskets. But you may have other problems like a cracked block or head that can only be fixed by replacing the engine or heads. Its hard to say if it sjust a blown head gasket then you can pull the heads and replace the gaskets and see what happens. It may fix it it may not fix it, the only way of knowing is to replace the gasket and see what happens.

AlfredB18

Wow. 3 Gr's for a rebuild? Even a GM crate is 1800ish and I believe I found a 3.4 rebuild from PepBoys for $1100...or was that Autozone, but you get the idea.

I'm in the same boat as you. My 3.4 is sitting with a nice oil and water mix in the oil pan thanks to the previous owner, who managed to remove the radiator, fan and some AC stuff for some reason, but not actually fix anything otherwise. Seemed like an intake or head gasket leak at first check. Intake definitely did not look good.

I did find a complete 3.4L down the road from me for $550, but I really need to yank this bad one out first and give them that for a core. Good luck.

I think I'll just part my 3.4L if there's any good out of it, then swap in a gently used one. I have to fight the LT1 swap devil....you can mull that over when you buy a car for $200 and a new crate v6 engine alone costs more than a complete swap package from TACREATIONS.

jonathan_abilene

take off the heads, look at the pistons. see which one is clean looking and not black like the others. that is where the gasket leak is. replace

total cost: $70 for all gaskets

or better yet, run a compression check on all the cylinders, that will tell you where the leak is