A search turned up nothing on this particular topic for me...

As my neon drips a quart of oil per 2 weeks, I'm scratching my head about where to buy a head gasket for it. I've done some reading and it seems some people have to replace their head gasket every 70,000 miles or so. Almost like it's just routine maintenance. So who makes one that is reliable? A link would be great.

Also, how much labor time is involved in replacing the HG?

 

if you have to ask baout how long with will take ect, do you and us a favor and pick up a haynes manual. NOT the chilton, a haynes.
also, make sure you at the very least, or best, get a mls headgasket set. this will come with vavle seals, vavle cover gasket, intake gasket, exhaust, ect ect. you will have all this apart to do the hg, might as well get all new gaskets for the head up. and be sure to take the extra 30 bucks and take the head to the maschine shop and have it milled for true flatness while it is off.

 

I'd personally get the head gasket kit from Modern Performance. Costs about $90 and has all the other gaskets you will need to replace as well.

Try and get a Felpro head gasket....great quality.

 

i bought mine from autozone its felpro(i work there and get 20% off). i got the whole set, i drive hard, and its been on for 1000 miles no problem yet. it is an easy job, minus the harmonic balancer but if you throw it in the oven on 220 for 20 minutes it will slide right on. good luck.

 

It is recommended that new head bolts be used as these are a stretch or torque to yield bolts and are susceptible to breakage if reused.

 

Yes, you use NEW bolts.

 

I got my headgasket in a kit that came with every other gasket plus some Idont need, like the exhast manifold and intake manifold. It came from lordco autoparts and was 150 cdn.

 

Okay, so it's getting close to time to get this done. I wanted to know about labor time just to get an idea in my head about how much I should expect to spend to get a shop to fix it. I had expected $300 in labor or so, but I see that it's closer to $1000. I absolutely can't do that, so now I have to do it myself. After all, I bought this car for $385.

I already have the Hayne's manual. It came with the car. Indeed, it is much better than the Chilton that I bought for my truck.

I'll go with the Fel-Pro, as was suggested.

It's unbelievable to me that this wasn't a recall. Can you imagine how much oil drips out of Neons all over the country because of this little flaw? Talk about an environmental concern

Question: What causes the HG failure? Is the factory head gasket too weak? Or is the head just designed improperly where there are weak points in the design? Assuming I replace the HG like a champ with the Fel-Pro one, will it last "forever" or just slightly longer than an OEM replacement? Basically, are all Neon HG's doomed to leak prematurely?

 

The headgasket failure was due to poor quality material. The MLS one is much better and should last you around 100,000 miles.

Here is a pretty good how-to also...
http://www.allpar.com/fix/headgasket-2.html

 

As Das says, the original gasket was of poorer quality than the new replacements, in addition the area where it fails has a narrow sealing area and that may contribute to the problem. I also read somewhere that there may have been an issue with the head bolt at this location bottoming out (other sites say it's not true).