There is no resurfacing allowed with this cylinder head, if there is 0.002" of warpage the head must be replaced. The amount spent should have included a new cylinder head.
+1
it was quite clear at the prior thread that car is likely a junk
a number of low-cost âchecksâ and âdo it before going with any heavy artilleryâ suggestions were raised there, but OP was dead-set to have headgasket replaced
Iâm not really surprised about how heâs got into the current situation 
Sue you for the $4,000; hell, you should sue them for failing to repair the car. Any judge would sympathize with you and recognize that the garage is trying to milk you for all youâve got⊠One more thing, mentioned elsewhere about taking the car to another shop and getting it fixed, would that void your warranty, what warranty? It has to be repaired first for any warranty to be valid.
Thank you, but if you read what I said, I was clear that I donât have the credit rating for a loan.
I said several times the unbilled amount I will owe is $4,000, not $5,000 on the repair of the current part.
Thank you VDCdriver. As you saw, cars are a lot more expensive now than they used to be. We all know the reasons, chip shortages, governments paying people not to work, etc. You make a good point for the others that car rental prices vary by location. This location they are expensive, and I know what the rates are because I called every car rental specialist, and dealships that offer leases in a large mile radiusâŠ
OK, only $4000 but against the advice last time, you took a badly carboned up engine, burning oil, and âpossibleâ head gasket problem, and stuck another $4000 into it without success. You need an engine in my humble opinion but that would be stupid at this point.
So now we are into math. You got 50,000 miles after paying $10,000 or 20 cents a mile minus any trade in value. Spending another $4000 added another 8 cents and now looks like there is no or little trade in value. Itâs not hard to get a fixed asset cost of under 20 cents so as the song goes, you need to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.
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You should have quit repairing when you were ahead, you shouldnât have spent that $3,200 last time.
That $3,200 last time should have been used as a down payment.
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When the differential failed on my 12 year old 62 Ford Galaxy, this was many years ago, teenage me asked the mechanic who made the diagnosis if he wanted the car for himself, gratis. He agreed, no money changed hands, only the title. A couple months later I saw his wife taking the kids to school in it 
I continued to see my old Galaxy around town running errands for several more years. I always thought that was a good win-win compromise.
OP, if your mechanic wonât agree to something like this, ask around at other shops. There may be a mechanic at one of them whoâd like to buy it from you at a price that makes sense for your needs.
This may very well be the official recommendation, however I am sure that some people do resurface them with success. I assume there are Head Saver shims or extra thick head gaskets available to compensate for the material loss from resurfacing.
Resurfacing the cylinder head isnât impossible however the result would be greater emissions output, this would be difficult to measure at a shop level but would be greater than the EPA test results.
This engine has a compression ratio of 13:1, an increase in compression would have an effect. Resurfacing the cylinder head effectively lowers the camshafts by the depth removed, the timing chain canât be shortened by the correct amount so the valve timing has been modified.
A new cylinder head is $891, I might try to resurface one if I were working on the car in my driveway but for a professional it must be replaced.
It would have been reasonable to replace the engineâin its entiretyâeither with a low-mileage used one, or a reman. It also would have been reasonable to junk the car at that point, and buy a different (most likely older) used car instead. It was not reasonable to think that doing a head gasket on a sludged-up engine was a good idea, and a reasonable mechanic should have refused to attempt such a thing.
That being said, your biggest problem at this point isnât a car problem; itâs a financial problem: namely the fact that you make/have made poor financial decisions and are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. At this point, you need to cut your losses on this car. Nothing short of a replacement engine will make this car run properly, and you canât DIY, and you canât afford to have this done professionally.
Once you cut your losses on this car, your next step should be to buy a cheap used car on Craigslist, an older model that runs well, for $3k or less. After that, you should take the car to a different shop and have them perform whatever proactive maintenance is needed, which might include replacement of the spark plugs and ignition wires, replacement of the timing belt kit and water pump, replacement of the radiator hoses and heater hoses, replacement of the transmission fluid and filter, etc.
Once you have secured decent affordable transportation for yourself, the next step should be getting rid of your debts and learning to live within your means. This means declaring bankruptcy, and cutting all unnecessary expenditures out of your budget. No wasting money on brand-name clothes when cheap clothes will do. No wasting money on restaurants, bars/nightclubs, concerts, movie theaters, unnecessary travel, etc. Pay attention to sales when grocery shopping, and try to buy only whatâs on sale at each store, and then plan your meals accordingly.
Once you start living within your means and saving up money, you should continue to drive old cars, keep them properly maintained, and resist the temptation to spend money âupgradingâ unnecessarily.
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Several people in the other tread believed that the engine had sludge however I did not see where the OP stated this. The original post stated that the intake valves and EGR system had carbon deposits and this has been cleaned. I suspect this was a misdiagnosis in resolving the complaint, whatever that was.
We should not assume that the OP is a financial basket case. I believe in being economical but also believe life is short. I remember my wife was in Europe and I was proud that I bought a couple pair of jeans at Walmart while she was gone. I proudly showed her what I had done and she replied âwe donât buy our clothes at Walmartâ. They worked fine for changing oil. I wonât go into my other disagreements with this life style but just might suggest to loosen up a little. When I was a kid our neighbor was so tight that he wouldnât buy the kids watermelon because it wasnât nutritious enough for the money. We would invite the kids over. They all ended up dead like where the rest of us are heading so what good was it?
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I donât think Mr. Mustang has the problem.
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Maybe some of us donât want to drive old cars . Life is meant to be enjoyable so what works for you might not be what everyone else should do .
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Everyone can run into financial problems that arenât necessarily their fault. I remember when I was in college, working in a big box hardware store. We got a new guy in my department. Nice guy. Late 50âs, obviously highly educated. We all wondered what the hell he was doing working retail. Over time I got his story out of him. Turns out heâd been upper middle management at a large corporation that spun his division off which resulted in several jobs, including his, being eliminated. Couldnât find another job at his level because of ageism. So he ended up losing everything, including his wife, and working retail being abused by customers and the jerk manager. One day he failed to show up for work, and we found out later that heâd killed himself.
Takeaway being, we donât always know everything thatâs going on with the people who post here, and weâre not really a place to lecture on financials beyond a narrow automotive viewpoint. I donât think itâs appropriate for us to be giving dad advice about clipping coupons and not buying Levis.
That aside, I think OPâs main problem is not financial, but maintenance. From that other thread that Iâd forgotten about, the car was obviously not well maintained. That might be OPâs fault, or it might be the previous ownerâs fault. Either way, if we are going to lecture OP about anything, it should be about proper maintenance and/or making sure to give used cars a good inspection before you buy them.
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+1
When Lucentâa spin-off of AT&Tâwent belly-up, a huge number of highly-educated people in Central NJ lost their jobs, through no fault of their own. I know one couple, both of whom lost their jobs as a result, and because of ageism they were unable to locate anything in their fields of expertise. After a couple of years, the husband took a job teaching Physics, and despite the fact that he was overqualified for that job he earned only ~1/3 of what he had been paid at Lucent. The wife went back to college and earned another degreeâas a Paralegal. For the remainder of her working years, she worked for the State of NJ, making $18 per hr.
In my own case, as a young teacher, I couldnât subsist on my paltry salary, and had to work second jobs just to make ends meet. Now that I am retired, I have no intention of cheaping-out on anything that will make me comfortable and/or happy. As my late mother used to say, âThere are no pockets in burial shroudsâ.
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Yep! Thatâs a lesson I learned from my own folks. They sacrificed and saved their whole married life, planning to travel and spoil themselves after Dad retired. Then Dad got a degenerative muscle disease which eliminated traveling, which didnât matter anyway because he died of it 3 months after he retired. So they never got to enjoy the fruits of their frugality. Theyâd have been better off taking that European vacation when they were both healthy rather than being quite so focused on maximizing the retirement money hoard.
That didnât turn me into a wild spender or anything, but it also reinforced the notion that you can be prudent with money without depriving yourself of enjoying the life youâre living right now.
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+1
Because I was prudent with money (and because I happened to have invested wisely, in the '90s), I donât need to deprive myself of whatever makes me happy and/or comfortable in my remaining years.
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