Hey,


My 93' 2wd has 119,00 miles. It's in great shape, gets 25 mpg in the city. Later this fall I want to use it as a daily driver. I'm going to replace the timing chain with a LCE kit (metal guides). How much extra would it cost to get the head resurfaced and the head gasket changed, roughly? Six months ago it was blasting out white smoke like crazy, I mixed in some Bar's head gasket repair in the coolant and it went away. I was going to get a complete head gasket kit from LCE too, so I just need to know a rough labor cost of resurfacing the head and putting everything back together with new gaskets after the timing chain is replaced.

Thanks.

 

Whether the head needs to be resurfaced is determined by measuring if it has warped - after it has been removed and cleaned up.

Call around to machine shops in your area for quotes.

From my experience stop leak stuff has a tendency to stop up other parts of a cooling system - I never use them.

 

Its not clear to me - are you asking for a LABOR quote?

I never liked that HG stop leak stuff........

If it was blowing white smoke - then tear it down and fix it (if you can afford it)

In my case, I caught the TC breaking the guides, BEFORE it cut through the cover (Oberg oil filter)
So I put on the LC TC dual conversion
About a year later the HG went; I shoulda pulled it all apart then...

In my case, the machine shop took two passes on the head - 0.020"

I had a valve job done (300K or so) but re used the cam.
I am the original owner, so I know what its been through.

I have no idea what the labor rates would be; Id do the assemble myself, so I'd only be paying for the machine shop work.

 

I guess I want to know the price difference between replacing timing chain and replacing the TC and head gasket together. It's got to be a better deal to do them together.

 

Most reputable shops would not R&R the timing cover without removal of the head and likely the oil pan as well.. This would include headgasket replacement as a matter of course.

I'd be skeptical of shops that would.

 

It's easy to remove the timing cover out from under the head and replace the timing chain and parts w/o removing the head. It's up to you and what your comfortable with doing. Removal of the oil pan isn't needed unless you have pieces of the guide that dropped into the pan and you need to clean them out. The oil pan is sealed with F.I.P.G. We call it ( Fip- GA). Removing the cover and resealing it won't compromise the rest of the pan's seal.

Labor time to replace the timing chain with head removal is 12.0 labor hours.
Labor for simple replace of head gasket is 8.0 labor hours.
Different shops have different labor rates. So the total will be a littler different shop to shop

 

Mine's '89 2WD 22RE 5spd. At 155,000 miles i replaced the cover, chain, sprocket, guides and tensioner. Used rockauto-sourced parts except dealer only items. Driver-side guide was busted and some of it is in the pan. Cover was grooved by the chain. I carefully removed the cover without disturbing the pan or cylinder head. You will never get a better cylinder head or oil pan installation than the factory did. Its now 180,000 miles cuz I only use it occasionally when I need a pickup for something. No leaks and runs good. Do I worry about the pieces in the pan? No.

A do-it-urself w/o head and pan removeal link is somewhere here on this site. Good luck. If doing it again, I'd opt for all genuine Toyota parts.

Surface the cylinder head? "Don't fix it if it ain't broken"

 

Anytime I pull the head off of motor, I have it checked at my machine shop. With the aluminum head and cast block, the two different metals automatically start fighting each other. The water ports can be larger then what they were originally. A machine shop can see if the corrosion has gotten so bad that they can weld in new metal but for the cost it is just cheaper to buy a new head. Warping is not always a problem with the head. The corrosion to head can be a result of not flushing the coolant system on a normal schedule or the ground strap not attached from the head to the firewall.

What did the Bar Leak seal up? A crack in the head? As far as cost and what all might need to be done is hard to tell until you get into it.

 

Thanks guys. I didn't know removing the head was a normal part of changing the TC. I had been looking at 4crawler's method of doing it without removing the head.

http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTri...ingChain.shtml

 

It's certainly possible to do it. As 4crawler alludes to, it's a 'cheap trick' When you wrench on your own machine, anything goes, and you stand good for your own mistakes.

Many folks have successfully done the work this way, while others are left with leaks and trouble.

Most reputable shops are not willing to cut corners, and for good reason. They want to be thorough enough that their work doesn't come back.

 

This is the one I referred to in my earlier post. As I mentioned, it worked good and has for some time, so it's more than possible: it's quite easy and saves time and money, and those are the usual reasons for do-it-urself car repairs. Some do-it-yourselfers do it because they like the experience. Some cuz they're poor. Others because they don't trust repair shops to do quality work. The latter will almost certainly follow the factory instruction. If that involves automotive machine work. another problem presents itself.

Finding a good machine shop seems to be a problem almost everywhere nowadays. Back in the day, when all of the major castings for an engine were cast iron, surface finish wasn't so critical. Fifty-five years ago or so I saw a flathad Ford V-8 head setup on a planer at school. The planer was probably 40 years old or more at that time. It must have been good enough, cuz the instructor was an old timer who knew his business. He wouldn't have allowed it if it wouldn't do the job. With aluminum heads and iron blocks the finish and gasket and assembly have to be right or it will have a relatively short service life.

I used Permatex Ultra-grey when I installed the new cover and cinched the two pan screws back down. Whatever u decide...good luck on it