My parents “gave” me my mom’s old car (a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix SE) when my car died and I needed transportation to school. I plan to pay them $2000 for the car when I can–which won’t be soon, as I am a medical student and I have 2 more years of school. After a few more months, however, I will no longer need the car, and my brother wants it. I’ll be happy to give it to him at that time.
The problem is that I just found out the car needs a new upper intake manifold gasket, which would cost me $800-1000. If I want to keep driving it, I will have to have this repair done, but I have very little money…so I don’t know how I’m going to do it! Any thoughts?! I need help!
You Should Be Able To Shop Around, Get Another Opinion, And Get That Done For Less Money. Don’t Put This Off.
CSA
Have your brother chip in and in a few months, he’ll be the new owner and benefiting from a repair that saved the engine.
Try This Repair Estimator.
CSA
This is a common problem with the 3.1 engine. I had a Chevy and Buick that needed this work, your price is in line with what I paid. This is the right way to repair the gasket. A cheap alternate is to try Steel Seal which some folks have had success with. It may work for a day, week, month or longer. Steel Seal is sodium silicate which you could buy cheaper. Search this forum and you will find a lot of discussion about this. Do not put this repair off, you could be getting anti freeze in your oil and that will ruin your engine. Check your oil filler cap and if you see a chocolate milk material on it you have water getting into the oil
I wouldn’t suggest using a sealer to try to fix this leak. The lower intake gaskets (there are no water jackets sealed with gaskets in the upper intake manifold) are O-rings set in plastic. Sealers probably will do no good for this. If it were an actual gasket, things would be different. Try shopping around for this one. It’s a very common problem, so people know how to do this repair, and surely someone will do it cheaper than $800-1000. I used to do them for $500 parts and labor because I got very good at them. I have done dozens of them.