2-3 hours of running my truck over a head gasket change?

[cat1101]

Hello -

This is my first post. I have a 1996 Toyota Tacoma standard truck - 4WD manual.

I have a friend who used to be a Toyota mechanic who does work on the side now.

My head gasket needed to be replaced and my friend did not have time to do it but he got me a better deal than my regular high end mechanic through a mechanic friend of his.

His friend owns a small shop that is nothing fancy and my head gasket did get replaced with much ado regarding my check engine light being on because he did not reconnect something right. So my friend told me in an irritating manner that he had been driving around half the day looking for this part and that it was not his problem.

I told him to let the other guy figure it out. That's when he told me that the other guy is not really a Toyota guy - more of an American car mechanic.

So whatever - it was all fixed in the end as they figured out it was something not connected right, which my friend assumed was broken.

To get to the main question I have here, though:

I drove my car there with a full tank of gas and got it back with just a bit over half a tank of gas. When I asked my friend about this, he said that maybe his mechanic friend had to run my truck for 2-3 hours over the head gasket change.

I just didn't get a good feeling about this and wonder if my "friend" didn't siphon out some of my gas thinking I owed it to him for all his driving around and helping me though I took him to dinner twice. I also gave him some extra money for gas when I went to get the car.

My mother and I were driving around a lot and realized how much one has to drive to get through nearly half a tank of gas. She even though some gas had been siphoned.

So, just wondering if what he said was true. Does it take that much running of a truck to change a head gasket?

There is nothing I can do about it now and will not accuse anyone, but I am wondering if I should trust my friend the Toyota mechanic to do any work in the future for me. My truck also came back sounding like a lawn mower (which I ended up paying more money to fix (to the Toyota mechanic) and since then the check engine light has come back on and I have an annoying squeak under my car somewhere that was not there before.

As well, I am surprised he didn't notice that my truck sounded like a volkswagen bug or a lawn mover when he was out driving it around looking for this part for the check engine light situation.

While this saved me money, it caused me a lot of aggravation and I didn't save as much as I thought I was going to. And now I have two extra problems that may or may not have anything to do with the situation above.

Thanks for any insight.

[inafogg]

hello, some times you will get coolant in the exhaust when removing the cyl. heads.
to remove you need to run the engine to burn the antifreeze out,but a 1/2 tank of
gas seems exsesive.the system needs to be scaned & the engine noise looked at some more but very possible it has some thing to do with the repair just my opinion

Good luck

[cat1101]

Originally Posted by inafogg

hello, some times you will get coolant in the exhaust when removing the cyl. heads.
to remove you need to run the engine to burn the antifreeze out,but a 1/2 tank of
gas seems exsesive.the system needs to be scaned & the engine noise looked at some more but very possible it has some thing to do with the repair just my opinion

Good luck

Hello - Thank you for sharing your insight. Yes, the check engine light did have something to do with the repair.

It turned out the head gasket is toast again as I started having the same white smoke coming out of the tail pipe but not as much this time. Then I checked the coolant and it was bone dry.

I took it to my friend who took something apart and could see that water was leaking around the cylinders and actually shot up through somewhere like a gyser. (Sorry, I can't remember exact details.)

So, the other guy who did the repair is going to redo it for free. However, my friend said that sometimes head gasket replacements just don't take and that often it has to do with the block is warped or there's a crack somewhere. I asked why that can't be figured out beforehand and he said sometimes you can't see them. He showed me a neat tool that can help one detect warps and I have asked him to ask the other guy to use it when he redoes this.

Also, he is going to put some blue devil product in there after it is done.

I guess the policy is one time on the mechanic and after that it is on me to fix a different
related problem.

Does this make sense?

Thanks!
Catherine