Will a new head gasket temporarily fix a warped head?

Question

Will a new head gasket temporarily stop a warped head from leaking oil?
Also, the oil is not milky.. does this mean the head is unlikely to be warped?

Just wondering if the car is worth pulling apart to fix.. it's pretty old.

Answer 1

skimming a warped head flat is so cheap and easy that it would be plain silly not to do it if the head is off anyway, if the oil has no coolant in it you are good to go, a cylinder compression test will tell you everything you need to know in minutes at minimal cost you can buy a tester in K-mart, walmart or pepboys etc etc

Answer 2

IF the head is warped a new gasket may help. Oil leaking out doesn't mean the head is warped necessarily. The gasket may just have failed.



NB If you get the engine dismantled enough to fit a new gasket, you may as well get the head checked/skimmed/re-faced at the same time. The main cost of this job will be the labour charge to get the head off in the first place, not the cost of the gasket or the price of the head repair.



If it's just leaking oil, and the coolant level isn't dropping every day, I would just remove the rocker cover and re-torque the cylinder head - it probably won't help tbh but it doesn't cost anything and is easy enough to do.



Alternatively depending how much oil you're losing, just keep degreasing the engine... or



If your car is old, you can get some stop-leak products you put in the oil and it makes gaskets swell up a bit, which may help stop a leak or make it less serious, but it's not a repair as such...or



If you can find a good used engine it may be cheaper to swap it for yours. Except you won't know if it's any good or not so a bit of a gamble.

Answer 3

doubtfull,how do you know the head is warped? it's not leaking coolant into the engine then it must be leaking out externaly. try some head gasket sealer from the parts store. it would be cheaper than wasteing coin and time on changing the gasket. i had a toyota truck 1980,it was useing coolant but not getting into the oil,and i used a can of head gasket sealer and got a year and a half of driving out of it.i then changed the gasket cause it got to useing coolant again. three years now and the damn thing is still running like a new truck.

Answer 4

Yes it will.. well depending how warped it is but yes it will temporarily fix the problem. What a warped head would do is burn the gasket from cylinder to cylinder. And just because the oil isn't milky doesn't mean u don't have a warped head.

Answer 5

have the head pressure tested and surface ground,just a gasket might last 30 minutes,if lucky