Blown Head gasket - 1990 4 door 22R

[jkai]

Hey guys, first time poster.

Need a little guidance. Got my first Hilux last year and has run perfectly for a year and half.
Think I pushed it a little too hard the other day and believe I have a blown head gasket.

White gu under the oil cap
Bubbles on the dipstick
Start up is slow and jerky

Rough cost to replace this? I bought the truck for 5k and wanna see if its worth to repair it.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[john253a]

If just a gasket under $100-120 to do your self with oil and filter
But it never just is
Because you take soo much off you just start replacing things like timing belt, water pump, thermostat
And you start lookin closer to 5-600 when done

What colour is the oil?
Does it use water?

White gue under oil cap can just be condensation mixed with some blowby

As far as weather to keep or not, well that's up to you with a bad engine that cars worth very little
I know as far as insurance is concerned that car in perfect order is a 2.5-3k car
I brought mine 90sr5 2.8d for 7 and put 3k on top to get rwc
Yes I could have found cheaper but rust and what knows is what brings the price down

[jkai]

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

Oil is a light brown kind of colour mixed with some kind of guish bubbles.
Coolant reserve goes down a little everytime I drive. Needs to be topped up every second time I drive to work.

Truck has always run well, no rust etc so happy to spend the 600. I do believe I could fix myself so I am assuming parts plus labour would set me back a lot more?

Thanks again for the help.

[john253a]

You might find you have blown out between the water jacket and cylinder bore

Only way to tell is to strip it down and have a look
Look at prices or vrs kits just in are you need to rebuilt the head
Then the price will go up a bit
Around 4-500 for basic head rebuild then 200 more if you stalite insert the exhaust (I would recomend this)
Then you gas and unleaded ready

[jkai]

Cheers for this. I'll let the mechanic know before I just rock up and ask him to find the problem.
As I am not mechanically minded (only know the basics) would def need them to do it for me.

Looking for a good mechanic if you know one in Melbourne? Only been here 2 years and not sure where to head with out getting ripped off.

Cheers