I have an R reg mini cooper 1875. Recently it broke down and our local garage has informed us that it is a valve in the cylinder head that has blown and the cost of repair will be between £400 to £500 pound. Is this a good price for this type of repair as it seems a bit expensive.
if you are confident enought to change a headgasket, then you could do this yourself. (depending if there is any damage to a bore or piston)
you could just buy a second hand head and fit that instead of repairing the new one, would be a hell of a lot cheaper!!!
A touch on the high side! per Stardude’s comments get yourself a s/h head . Assuming valve has not dropped out / broken and mashed your piston / bore its relatively easy - go fishing theough the plug hole as a cursory check - if it has then your quote is very reasonable indeed!
I suppose a garage would take about 7 hours to do the job at, say, £50 per hour, plus the cost of the valve(s), the head gasket, anti-freeze, etc. So for a garage to charge £400 - £500 would not be unusual.
The problem with Minis is that they are old technology and as such repair work tends to be labour-intensive.
I did some rally prep work on a 1.4 Sr Nova a couple of weeks ago and it was so simple to work on compared to a Mini.
The answer is to find a Mini specialist who won’t charge a fortune. Some of us work for £20 to £30 per hour plus parts and as we are doing this work a lot, the times are less than a normal multi-type garage. Depenging on the model, a head off, valve re-fitting and re-assemble should take between 3 and 5 hours. I did an early 850 in just over 2 hours a short time ago, but a Cooper ‘S’ takes a lot longer because of the long manifold which means the exhaust has to be moved out of the way by undoing the top engine steady and the lower exhaust clamps (at the very least - a fiddly job). I always bolt the manifolds on with 5/16" UNF x 1.25" long bolts as it saves so much time in future head removal. Au ‘Ultimate Engine Steady’ adds another 15 - 20 minutes to the job as well.
A ‘head off’ is quiet simple and the money you are saving would easily pay for the tools, including a torque wrench for the head nuts. If you want a list of tools, just ask. If you want a strip & rebuild sequence, again, just ask.
7 hours! I’d say its abit expencive really.
The very first time i did the headhasket on my car took me about 3 hours including exhaust clampas and ultimate engine steady and I took the rad out and changed the water pump whilst i was at it. The cost comes if you need to buy the tools. A decent socket/spanner set and a good torque wrench would cost you £100, a valve spring compressor another £20 then the valve itself and a new gasket set another £20-£30.
500quids sounds about right for a garage repair £60 per hour plus vat plus 100quids worth of parts with gaskets oil and antifreeze but its rare these days for a valve to go, but be prepared, the late engines do mega damage sometimes because the head gasket goes, and because of the wasted spark system they dont drive too bad till too late and you end up knackering the block and the head because you burn the metal away.
Bear-in-mind that to do this job properly you will be fitting at least one new exhaust valve. The seat(s) may need re-facing if it’s badly burnt. The valves have to be lapped in and all valves should be done if one has gone followed by a leakage test.
Depending on what engine steadies are fitted and what type of exhaust, the job could take quite a long time. With an LCB, for example, unless the engine can be pulled far enough forward on its mountings for the manifold to clear those ‘orrible little studs’, the entire exhaust may need to be removed.
And we’re not talking necessarily about workshops which just cater for the Mini and where the ‘quick’ skills exist, we may be talking abnout a general repair garage where the mechanics will pick up the wrong spanners or initially use the wrong techniques. There are many ‘dodges’ to doing a Mini, but you have to know them.
I reckon 7 hours is quite reasonable for this job. I think it would take me at least 4 to 5 to do it right and I’ve been working on Minis since about 1961.
