FixHead Gasket Replacement Cost
What owners actually paid
The shaded middle is where half of all these repairs landed: $280 – $1,453. The price on any one car depends on the vehicle — the table below shows the range for each.
What this repair is
The head gasket seals combustion, oil, and coolant paths between the engine block and cylinder head. Symptoms are white exhaust smoke, coolant loss with no leak, overheating, or oil-and-coolant milkshake. It is one of the biggest labor jobs in this catalog, and on a high-mileage engine an honest shop will talk through whether the vehicle justifies it before starting.
Head Gasket Replacement cost by vehicle
The most-repaired vehicles first. Each range is the middle half of real invoices for that vehicle; vehicles with their own page carry the full breakdown, real repair reports and a printable Fair Price Report.
| Vehicle | Typical cost | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Honda Civic | $483 – $1,043 | $798 |
Middle half of real invoices (25th–75th percentile) for that make and model, parts + labor.
What moves the price
- Engine layout — a V-engine has two heads and roughly twice the work.
- Head condition — a warped or cracked head adds machining or a replacement head.
- While it's apart — timing components and water pump are often renewed — cheap now, expensive later.
Quotes near the low end usually mean single-bank engine, head checked and reused, no machining. Quotes near the high end usually mean V-engine both banks, head machined or replaced, timing components renewed while apart.
The complaints behind this repair
Owners who end up with this repair most often came in with: Car Overheating. Each of those pages shows how often the complaint actually ends in this fix, and what the alternatives cost.
Not sure what's wrong yet?
Start from what the car is doing. The FixDozer drill asks a few plain questions and shows which fixes that complaint usually turns out to be — with the real cost of each.
Start from the symptomSomething look wrong on this page? Tell us.