Have a coworker that poped a head gasket(suposidly) or intake gasket on her buick 3.8

i am looking for amount of time it takes to do the job, so i can give her a quoke on what i'd charge her to do it

 

Are you going to do the replacement of every gasket on the way back up?

I would say it could be done in 4-6 hours, you'll also have to remember to get a back-up spare of the coolant elbows JUST IN CASE.

Shop would charge her $1200 probably. Do it for $600 labor and have her buy the complete gasket set.

 

Some shops may charge more on a head gasket job by sending the heads to be professionally inspected at a machine shop. Few times I've been involved in head gasket jobs, a simple eye ball inspection and verification with a straight edge (but I also did not have an issues pointing to bad heads).

All in all, I think Chibi is on target with a reasonable cost. I would suggest for the small cost difference, get the aluminum LIM gaskets.

When I did my mods, I replaced gaskets from the LIM up, I believe with those and new elbows, ball park was $100-$120 shipped from RockAuto (I think the aluminum Fel-Pro LIM gasket kit was like $70 and the Dorman UIM set was $30). Between the two sets you get a new T-body gasket, injector o-rings, EGR gasket, t-stat, replacement stove pipe for the LIM (narrow design, I believe to help ward off damage to the UIM). I think some other smaller items. You may or maynot want to use all the stuff they give you, but hey, it's there.

 

here is what a GM tech from my club said book time is and some added thing

7.6 for right, 6.2 for left, 9.7 for both

intake is 3.6 to reseal upper and lower. we usually charge around 4 hours to do the job because of a slight add to replace some plastic cooling elbows that go into the passenger side of the lower intake. I always recommend replacing them because they get brittle and ****ty from heat cycles over the years.

and make sure you carefully inspect the plastic upper intake near the throttle body. there is a egr passage there that often causing the upper intake to melt/crack/distort... another brilliant design