[s-cars] Head gasket: 2850$ (longuish)

[Vincent Frégeac]

Hi all,
 
I need some experienced input from the list regarding head gasket repair
cost.
 
First, some background. After one month rediscovering my 90Q20V, I finally
got, as usual, a good and a bad news. The good news: my S6 is, at last,
ready to hit the road again after blowing a head gasket on December 16. The
bad news: the bill is 2850$, and I made the conversion, 2850 US$ aka 3600
CDN$!
 
A few hours later, I found an other good news. In Quebec, we have a
gouvernement agency called something in french which could be roughly
translated in Consumer Protection Agency and they made a really good job.
So, tomorrow, I will take my S6 back home and won't pay a dime for it... for
now.
 
The story is we - the mech and me - always agreed on repair by phone and
this has no legal value. Above 100$, all repairs should have a written
estimate, signed by the customer. During the last phone call before the
astonishing bill, he mentionned that the three temperature sensor had
incoherent reading and the electric fan was rubbing so he expected the bill
to be closer to 1200$ instead of the first 600$ or so estimate. I agreed to
look at that and do what was necessary to have a better idea of the repair
cost. Then, no news for two weeks and a 2850$ bill. May be I'm an
optimistic/everybody's nice/new age guy - not likely - but I don't think the
mech try to screw me. He's a perfectionist used to work on high value cars
and he didn't keep track of the cost involved until the job was finished.
According to our Consumer Protection Act, my only obligation is to give him
a few days to put the old parts back in place and get the car back with no
expense. I don't want to go this far. I just want to pay a reasonnable price
for the repair.
 
So, the big question is: how much should have this cost? The starting point
was: blown head gasket, head not likely to be machined as the overheating
was limited to 110C but who knows, a difference between temperature sensors
up to 20C and an electric fan working when it should but really noisy. For
those who work on cars, what should have been replaced to repair the head
gasket and avoid another head gasket failure in the following weeks and how
long should it take.
 
I really want to make a decent offer to the mech for his job. I'd prefer not
go to court but, besides, I don't want to pay for repairs that should have
been done at one point but was not necessary at this point. Just to give you
an idea of how perfectionist this guy is, he drove the car for more than
200km and let it idle for more than 6h to diagnose and test the repairs.
BTW, I'm a bit suspicious about the 200km. I think a part of it is having an
S6 for the week-end is not necessarily a bad experience for a mech.
 
So, I'm waiting for you estimates to be able to make a reasonnable offer to
this poor mech.
 
 
 
Vincent.

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