Head gasket replacement reasonable price/worth it?

Heavy coolant loss with white smoke, rough idles.

 

At that stage the motor is very likely ruined. Mr F indicated he ended up with a bent rod.

 

...which I replaced for $106, thus being able to keep the rest of the engine.
Of course, I did check for head warpage and the condition of the cylinder walls before proceeding.

 

Nice, did you do the work yourself or hired another mechanic besides Gasket Masters?

 

I worked on it myself—no other mechanics.

 

Finally got around to measuring this yesterday during a second rebuild. With the washer in place, there is a good 10 mm between the bottom of the bolt and the bottom of the threaded hole in the block. Even without the ~3 mm washer, and even after the final stretch of the bolts, there should be at least 5 mm left below the bolt, so I do not think it bottomed out at any point.

My guess would be that when bolted in directly to the softer aluminum seat of the head (compared to the harder steel of the washer), the same initial torque (500 kgf·cm) produced a smaller clamping force. This would explain why the gasket was scuffed around that bolt, but I'm not sure why the bolt itself sheared off.

 

What mileage / time warranty did they provide? Did they honor the warranty?

 

1 year warranty. They did not honor it.

 

Wow! That’s crazy. Now they are giving out 3 year warranties. I guess it wouldn’t matter if it were a 10 year warranty. I’m sorry you had that experience.

Did they offer unlimited mileage?

 

It failed in less than a month and in less than 700 miles IIRC, but I guess none of that matters. The warranty ended the moment I paid them.