A head gasket set is a little under 200$ for all of the gaskets that you need. It should only take a few hours of labor to take the top of the motor off and put the gasket back in and put the motor back together.
You need to find out if the estimates you are getting are worse case or best case. Like weezer said, if you have other problems with the car it can get very expensive. I would expect any good shop to tell you what the price is if they don't find any problems, and what the price range could be if they get the head off and find that you have other problems than just a gasket.
My headgasket had a slow leak so I had it changed two years ago. It was well under 1000$ without any other problems found in the engine when the head was taken off. |