b123zmanab

Hey everyone, I'm new to the site and looking for a bit of advice/help. I have a 98 2.4l and it has about 260,000 trouble free miles on it until now. The head gasket is leaking and needs to be replaced. Now, my question is should I put a new head and head gasket on and call it good or with that many miles on it should I just go ahead and put a lower milage motor in? My concern with just doing the head and head gasket is that the rest of the motor has many miles on it and I need this truck to last. I can do all the work myself on both options so that saves me money on that part. Any advice would be great.

Rowland

If you can do the labor, then my advice is to go ahead and replace the head gasket, timing chain, oil pump, etc. and see what happens. The cost for parts shouldn't be more than couple hundred bucks, assuming OEM. Less if you go with cheaper parts.

FogRunner

As long as the engine wasn't burning oil or had any other issues before the head gasket then by all means I would just replace the head gasket. As far as head gaskets go the inline four is as easy as they get.

Just be sure and use TOYOTA OEM PARTS for the the gasket, chain, water pump and any other critical parts.

b123zmanab

The engine doesn't burn any oil.. I think I might just go the head gasket route then. Do I need to get the head exchanged? How would I know if it is warped?

FogRunner

Have a machine shop check it and if its warped I would get it shaved. I'm not a fan of head exchanges because you don't know if it was rebuilt on a Monday or Friday.

But normally heads only tend to warp if overheated

70elcoss

if the head is warped you can take it to a machine shop and have them work on it. when i rebuilt my 3.0 i had the valves leak tested and after 245k miles they didnt seal up too good so they hot tanked the heads, did a valve job and resurfaced both heads for $400.

yours should be cheaper since its only one head

b123zmanab

Ok, I will have it checked out. The motor has never been over heated but I rather have it checked while it's off. I'm going to adjust the valves as well. Where is a good place to get valve shims or a valve shim kit?

Rowland

I have gotten my OEM parts from either 22reperformance.com or autohausaz.com. Non-OEM parts I got from engnbldr.com or from Autozone for minor stuff.

b123zmanab

Besides the obvious head gasket, what other gaskets do you guys think I will need to replace at the same time?

Texas_Ace

I would swap in another motor 100%. It will end up only costing you a little more and you get a lower mileage motor out of the deal. I have also seen too many head gasket jobs only run for a little while before something else went. The oil will quickly get contaminated with a leaking head gasket and that will hurt a lot more in the motor.

I found a few local motors for $800-1000 with a lot less miles then you have. Not to mention that swapping motors is quicker, pull out, toss in. Also no chance of finding something else wrong inside the motor you then have to fix ect. Too many places for a head gasket job to bite you once you are committed IMO.