Brought my 85 Runner into a shop in CO to have it checked out. They said it needs a new engine because of a leaky head gasket and low compression. The estimate was 4000-5000. Is that high? If so does anyone have any recommendations for a shop in the Denver area?

 

my 3VZE had the same diagnosis with an estimate in the $3500 range to repair the same dumb engine. instead, i had an engine swap done. the total expenditure to have a lot of stuff replaced and have a donor engine torn down, cleaned out and put back together ended up somewhere in the $6K range, but now i have so much new stuff, i won't be doing maintenance for quite some time. i went with toy crawlers for the work and was very pleased with the results. you can check out their page and call jacob if you're interested.