98 Deville with blown head gasket, worth fixing?

[dhspring]

Help me out here guys, I just learned my 98 Deville has a blown head gasket and the repair shop, not a Caddy dealer, quoted ~$3500 to repair, which includes doing a valve job. This car has the 4.6L Northstar engine with 127,000 miles, here's the question, would you repair it or trade it in? The car still runs well and I could probably drive it down to CarMax and trade her off. The body and interior is in reasonably good condition, not perfect, but decent. Opinions and comments please!!

Thanks

DHSpring

[maxwedge]

I'd let is go, stripped threads in the block are common with the head gasket issue, once they are in there you may be stuck with additional expense, I'd say so long.

[dhspring]

Thanks for the advice, I can't see throwing good money after bad, after I put $3500 the car is still only worth $3500 to $4000. I have a dealer willing to give me $2000 sight unseen, so that's almost worth $5500 considering the repair and that's not bad. Someone at the auction can repair the motor and still have a decent car, I think it's time to say bye bye to the Caddy.

[wafrederick]

Although Cadillac is part of GM,Cadillac is by itself.There is GM and there is Cadillac which everything is differant.

[DFBonnett]

OP,
Get a second opinion. There are plenty of "mechanics" out there who couldn't diagnose the difference between a blown head gasket and the clap.

[95 9c1]

I'd have to agree with max wedge head gaskets are common with northstar's and absurdly expensive to repair and alot of times you find something else wrong while it's apart making the repair cost even more. let her go and get another vehicle just my 2cent's

[dhspring]

Thanks to all for the advice, I did what I thought was the best and traded her off, blown gasket or whatever it was and all, I replaced it with a 2005 Caddy STS with another Northstar V8 and it's pretty sweet. I wasn't about to pour in 3 to 4 grand for repairs and then have the same car worth about 4 grand for something else to go wrong down the road. Added to that, this shop is a local yokel shop that does brakes and A/C work mainly, I wasn't about to them them disassemble the 98 caddy Northstar engine and have parts strewn all over the place, it would have been a miracle to get it back together and running properly. So that one is over and gone.