My wife’s head gasket went and we had to decide do we get a new car or replace the entire engine and the fact the engine was the better option these days is just wild. Those new monthly payments are wild
Ya but usually to justify doing large jobs like these you gotta weigh out how much your repairs are annually and if you put more work Into a car a year than the cost of a car payment per year it use to be betrer to just get another car.
Yupp. New HG for a subaru is nearly the same price as an engine and once you’re in high miles it just saves time and money doing the entire engine. The engine takes about 4h to do vs a head gasket which is about 12h. It’s stupid.
Head gaskets, plural, on a Subaru boxer engine! One on each side. The procedure for that job basically starts with step 1: Remove engine.
So at that rate, if you have a new crate motor on hand you can skip all the shit in the middle and proceed straight to step 2: reinstall engine. It doesn’t surprise me the parts cost for an engine outweighs the labor cost for removing it plus taking it apart twice.
I’m not sure it’s possible to get the heads out of a modern Subaru without pulling the engine. An older one where there was more room in the engine bay, maybe. But there’s too much shit in the way and the unibody and wheel arches are like 1/2" away from the tops (sides) of the heads. I’d doubt you could get a wrench on all the bolts, let alone snake the head bolts out which are like 10" long.
And what happens to the old engine? Does it get refurbished somewhere slow&cheap and become a crate motor for step 2 a few months down the line? Or thrown out?
Depends, but most likely it is either parted out or sent back to be refurbished. Failing that, it will certainly be recycled. There is a shitload of aluminum in any vaguely modern engine (like, from the 1990’s onwards) so even the shadiest of shadetree mechanics will have it melted down for cash before just chucking it in a landfill.
Same thing happens with transmissions. It’s nearly impossible to buy a new transmission for cars that are more than a couple of years old – they’re all remanufactured by Jasper or whoever.
My wife’s head gasket went and we had to decide do we get a new car or replace the entire engine and the fact the engine was the better option these days is just wild. Those new monthly payments are wild
I mean, that kinda makes sense? An engine should be cheaper than a whole car, shouldn’t it?
Ya but usually to justify doing large jobs like these you gotta weigh out how much your repairs are annually and if you put more work Into a car a year than the cost of a car payment per year it use to be betrer to just get another car.
Replace the entire engine over a head gasket?
Yupp. New HG for a subaru is nearly the same price as an engine and once you’re in high miles it just saves time and money doing the entire engine. The engine takes about 4h to do vs a head gasket which is about 12h. It’s stupid.
Head gaskets, plural, on a Subaru boxer engine! One on each side. The procedure for that job basically starts with step 1: Remove engine.
So at that rate, if you have a new crate motor on hand you can skip all the shit in the middle and proceed straight to step 2: reinstall engine. It doesn’t surprise me the parts cost for an engine outweighs the labor cost for removing it plus taking it apart twice.
I’m not sure it’s possible to get the heads out of a modern Subaru without pulling the engine. An older one where there was more room in the engine bay, maybe. But there’s too much shit in the way and the unibody and wheel arches are like 1/2" away from the tops (sides) of the heads. I’d doubt you could get a wrench on all the bolts, let alone snake the head bolts out which are like 10" long.
And what happens to the old engine? Does it get refurbished somewhere slow&cheap and become a crate motor for step 2 a few months down the line? Or thrown out?
Depends, but most likely it is either parted out or sent back to be refurbished. Failing that, it will certainly be recycled. There is a shitload of aluminum in any vaguely modern engine (like, from the 1990’s onwards) so even the shadiest of shadetree mechanics will have it melted down for cash before just chucking it in a landfill.
Same thing happens with transmissions. It’s nearly impossible to buy a new transmission for cars that are more than a couple of years old – they’re all remanufactured by Jasper or whoever.