In a tough spot - my 1985 Jaguar XJ6 has a blown head gasket and needs a new engine. Trying decide if it is worth doing an engine swap, or if it is time to let the car go. I'd like to keep it out of a scrapyard if I can... does anyone have advice on shops that will take on this kind of a job for a reasonable price? Or where to sell project car Jaguars to hopefully give it a new life?

 

Why do you need a "new" engine. A head gasket replacement on a 1985 XJ 6 is a finiky job, but quite do-able. Let us know where you are located. Ian

 

I am in the Chicago area - had a mechanic borescope the engine, and he said based on the oil/coolant mixture he saw, there is likely cylinder head warpage and piston ring damage. So if that's the case, I would have to have the engine rebuilt or put in a different engine. Not necessarily new, of course.

 

I would pull the head and see what danage is done before looking for a new engine.

 

Are you able to do the work yourself? If so definitely pull the head, if you are unfortunately stuck with paying someone else, then you are kind of at their mercy! I would hate to tell you to tell the mechanic To just do head and it turn out to be a bad motor ( unlikely, but possible) and don’t let people tell you its
cheaper to lump it! , it’s really not, maybe just for the engine and swap, but making everything work gets expensive and is time consuming!! ( ask me how I know! lol)

 

I think your mechanic may be being rather too pessimistic. Whilst modern all-alloy Jaguar engines can suffer head warping, and even block warping after an overheating episode, this is almost unheard of with the XK engine, which has a very substantial cast iron block and head. The main defect that tended to lead to scrapping was cracking between the cylinders, only curable by complete engine strip to a bare block then replacing the liners with lipped liners to cover the cracks. You can see it all being done here: -

However, Jaguar made a change in about 1982 to cease using liners to cover the block coolant cross-passages, and moved to the so-called "slotted block", which your engine will have. You'll see the slots when you lift the head. This very late modification cured the cracking but head gasket failure can still occur for almost no reason at all when the engine gets beyond about 80-90 thousand miles. So new head gasket, clean-up block face, and possibly a very light skim of the head and away you go. And all well do-able DIY !