Ok, so the skinny is a guy not far from me has a 1997 Camaro v6 with some engine problems. Recently he blew a head gasket running the motor without water, swapped for a newer engine (an oem 1998 v6) and recently he red lined the thing and blew a rod (he suspects, but is not sure. he says the engine def has a rod knock and it will start but is so loud he is terrified of driving it.) so he has two bad motors right now, each with it's own problems.
Needless to say he needs to get the car on the road asap, he asked me what I thought would be best and most affordable and I have an idea but also some concerns.
My idea- since I cannot be sure the heads are not warped or worse on the old motor, obviously putting a new head gasket on and putting it back in the car is a pretty bad idea without taking the heads to a shop and having them magnafluxed to look for cracking/warping etc. The newer motor has most likely fried internals and would need serious fucking work (well beyond what I can do and what the car is worth) but I can be reasonably sure the heads are good so.....
Pulling the new motor and swapping heads with the old one and putting the old motor (now with the new heads and head gasket) seems ideal I think. I don't even want to fuck around with the rod knock, fuck that his car isn't worth it (though he claims it is a show car and has tremendous sentimental value) so I am thinking my approach is best.
The reason I am posting- I have never worked on a camaro in my life, though I have done head gasket jobs on several american cars so I know roughly what I am getting myself into. I'd like to hear from anyone here what experiences they have with camaro's from this time period, what amount of work am I looking at here for an experienced but amateurish mechanic? I have the chiltons already, but that's never the same you know?
Am I way off base in thinking a quick motor swap and head exchange and new head gasket will solve the situation? I am thinking I need to figure out why on earth he has now a rod knock in a new motor (well, new relatively speaking, it has 100k miles on it) since he just blew a head gasket from overheating the last engine.
Is the old motor going to need a valve job after the overheating before it can function reliably or not? I mean, I should be able to take the valves and rocker assembly out of the new block and if anything is damaged from the red lining incident just take what I need from the old block.
I bid the job at $600 to start, as that is normally what I charge for a head gasket job, is this sounding like a $600 job to anyone with experience or should I bid this a bit higher? I basically charge half what most shops would charge, being an amateur mechanic.
I can do a head gasket job in like 4-5 hours typically, sometimes it takes longer depending on crazy shit happening, like the sunbird I did the head gasket job on took me three days because it was fucking IMPOSSIBLE TO EVER REACH ANYTHING AT ANY TIME EVER. It drove me INSANE, but in hindsight i could do it a lot faster now.
Thoughts/0pionions/Input greatly appreciated(please, for the love of all that is good in the world, no trolling this one time)
Having given this some thought, I can do two things- #1 pull the heads off the old motor and run them to a mechanic to check if they are warped or cracked, inspect the block etc. and assuming the heads are ok and the block is intact, put a new head gasket on and check for compression, if the compression checks out yank the new motor and swap for the old one.
-OR- assess the damage on the motor in the car now (unsure if I can do this without pulling the heads off and getting down into the motor, which would take 1-2 hours I estimate) and look to see what needs to be done- I would have to charge the guy for the work needed to assess damage for the new motor up front, so I think in terms of keeping costs down (he is on a fixed income so $$$ counts here for him and I understand that) the cheapest route would be to get the old motor working.
ugh...not sure what to do. I've never been put to the test like this before, this is where it pays to have the car done by a shop with experience but he cannot afford that so he needs a person to get the job done right for as little as possible...
Originally Posted by sonatine
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