Has anyone had head gaskets replaced ? apparently mine are leaking. This place I took my car to for a quote wants $13,105 to do 2 head gaskets ? I could put in a new F'n motor for that. Has anyone done the work themselves. I am really more curious on how many hours labor are called for and what the price to get it done is? I have a secondary car insurance that will be like $7,000 of it but still thats insane. I am going up upgrade the cylinder head stud kit to avoid any possible stretch in the future. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you

 

I replaced the head gaskets on the AJ133 in my 2012 Range Rover for somewhere around $1k, IIRC.
But to be fair, that included cam chains, tensioners, rails...
Almost all genuine JLR parts.
And IIRC it took 3 or 4 weeks, although I can't guess how many hours.

 

You’re paying the Jaguar tax for that job, find a speciality shop and get another quote. One that has a history of working on these engines .

 

Did you overheat the engine? Upgrading studs will not stop the head gaskets from failing if the engine overheats.

 

that isn’t at all JLR dealer even. It’s a place that specializes in imports. Yea it’s crazy but I called around several other places and it’s mainly bc it requires like 30-40 hours shop labor or some ridiculous quote. Plus machining the heads to make sure there is a clean smooth surface. To answer someone else’s question about getting it hot I don’t think so but the gauges are always far behind what’s actually happening as you know.

 

These head gaskets (and almost all head gaskets for that matter) don't fail from normal use. Maybe the Cadillac Northstar or the old Oldsmobile diesels, but not these engines. You need to find out why they failed, or it will just do it again. It's not weak head bolts from the factory.

 

that’s a go away we don’t want the headache quote.

worst case scenario you’re timeserting the engine, decking the block face and fixing messed up cam journals or outright buying new heads

i would never stand by my work on a 126/133 head job unless there was a machine shop in-house.

 

Can you answer about the over heating?
As lotusespritse posted several times above these engines do not have head gasket problems unless they have been over heated.
What happened?
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well no one wants to do it bc its a 30 hour plus job. JLR wont even do it like i said. By their book they are supposed to replace the engines only. As far as overheating no the gauge never said it got hot. That being said I dont know if the head is warped at all. This all stemmed from the coolant crossover / valley pipes I had replaced awhile back when the deteriorated and blew. it had to of happened when that occurred. I have talked to 4 different shops and they are all about the same and I didnt tell them what the others were charging. Even one of our cherished and beloved Tech members here "GT40" told me he just finished one right at 30 hours they are a true pain especially after I watched the guy on the youtube channel "I DO CARS" take one apart. Good god that looked special.

 

That's enough for me to know for sure you overheated your engine. When the plastic pipes split from the high pressure these the coolant system's run at, the coolant completely dumps out of the system from the pressure and the temp sensor is suddenly no longer submerged in coolant to get an accurate measurement of the temperature, which is why you didn't get anything on your dash.

You are in a bad situation that many have been in before because they don't know to proactively fix the cooling system and they also don't know to pull over immediately and shut down the engine if there is steam coming out of the engine bay. Can't really blame them. Most Jag owners just want to drive and not think about maintenance or how to handle different failures on the road.

Your best bet is to buy a rebuilt motor from a company that specializes in rebuilding them. You have a very low chance of finding a good machine shop and engine builder locally that won't screw something up on these engines, and if you buy a used engine, you have a very low chance of getting a good one that wasn't overheated already or poorly maintained by the previous owner(s).

A rebuilt one will cost you with shipping and taxes around $12-14K without installation, so close to $20K all in. Is your car worth that plus what it would sell for as a project/parts car? If not, sell it for a project/parts car and buy another one and this time do the preventative cooling system maintenance.

https://www.roverpartsdepo.com/produ...charged-engine
https://ebay.us/m/bdlndw

 

Hard truth: at 30 hours of labor you're already in for more than the car is worth. I would either find a good core or just buy another car. If you want relatively cheap power and luxury, a W211 Mercedes E55 AMG is a better choice than an X351.

This is why these cars are worthless on the used market. Unless you have the margin to throw unworldly amounts of money at a depreciating asset or are a competent DIY, it makes no sense to own one.

 

Again listen to what lotusespritse posted!

Just a little background information about Jaguar's so called temperature "gauge"? We really don't have a gauge as you found out. At best they installed an indicator. The temperature gauge is purposely "damped" so it stays in the center almost all the time regardless of the engine temperature. This was done starting years ago as too many people were bringing the cars back to the dealer because the gauge needle moved. Just like it is suppose to but people panicked and went to the dealer anyway.

Now none of this was published at all. BUT people on this forum reported just as you have that their engines did indeed overheat BEFORE the gauge did anything! Finally one enterprising forum member did some testing. Found out that over a 50 degree temperature swing the needle did not move from the center position at all! This is why I and others keep recommending you use a aftermarket device to read and monitor the real coolant temperature. We have a nice simple setup using Toque Pro with a custom PID pack courtesy of old time member Cambo. But there are many other solutions as well.

If the gauge does move it will be way too late and the engine will be overheated by that time.

So for others reading this thread here is what you need to do.
First open the hood regularly and check for leaks and proper coolant levels.
Second install and use an aftermarket device that displays the real coolant temperature. That is cheap and easy to do.
Third stop the car at the first sign of any overheating or coolant loss. DO NOT keep driving regardless of the distance! Get it on a flatbed to a repair shop.
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My cousin overheated his F-pace Aj126 over 5-6 times blew the rear pipe ,the thermostat cracked and other leaks years back ,and he put Headgasket sealer by bars leak, i said no way and cussed him out, but 5 years later running like a champ, then I installed all the metal pipes for him, now I'm not saying do what he did ,It just happened to work for him ,before you guys get in a uproar.

 

Unfortunately, I think that’s how many Jag’s with damaged head gaskets are sold, with a couple of cans of stop leak holding it together long enough to sell. The stuff does work as shown by real world tests on youtube, but usually doesn’t last as long as your cousin’s.

 

I tried a few different head gasket leak sealants with the AJ133 in my Range Rover, but none of them worked in my case.
I tried Blue Devil's head gasket sealant 3 times, K-seal once and a couple of Bar's Leak head gasket products.
None of them helped, and since it was an on-going problem for a few years and I flushed each of them out after they didn't help none did any harm.
The only thing that did fix it in the end was taking the heads off & replacing the gaskets, something I tried to avoid (and truthfully, I was in denial) for years but coordinated it at the same time I retrofitted the new timing chain tensioner & rails on it.
It's been over a year since I did & almost 10k miles, and it's still fine.

There is an off chance if you have a Vocational Tech school in your area, that they might entertain replacing your head gaskets in one of their classes for cost of parts/materials.
Although it's been nearly 50 years since I went to Vo-Tech, they allowed classes in the mechanics and body shop classes to do some repairs at cost to people who would let them work on their vehicles.
And it should be a slow & methodical repair, by the book by nature of it being Vocational Technical training.

 

I had head gasket problems and it was cheaper and easier to get a used engine from the junk yard I paid $2500.00 for a motor with less than 100,000 miles on it and it was the easiest engine swap I've ever done

 

That $2500 price seems to be the exception, not the rule, from what I have seen of used engine prices. I am not sure the OP can duplicate that success. And then plenty of junk yard engines are lemons, so if you are paying someone to do the install, it's risky.