Re: NEW HEAD OR NEW VALVE GUIDES?? (archive)

I just handed my E34 M5 head to Eagle Machine, Auburn GA for a reconditioning operation. $640. $300 for checking guides, straightness, cleaning, assmebly and disassembly and the rest for guides, valve seat cutting and cam carrier cleaning. Eagle is the best shop in GA and does some pretty awesome work.

I have not seen a used or reconditioned head for less than $3k for the E34 M5. I suspect the E28 is similar. That and you don't know how good the reconditioning job was or how good the guides in a used one are.

Since I removed the head myself and intend on putting it back myself too, I cannot comment on the labour aspects, but it seems to be it would be the same for either a new or a reconditioned head.

I will shortly be posting the entire disassembly and reassembly procedure with hundreds of pictures on my WWW site, so write to me if you want to do it yourself.

Neil Deshpande
http://www.neilwerke.com

P.S. Even if you get a used head, you will have to machine the surface to remove the gasket footprint and that means you'll have to disassemble it to clean it properly. At that stage you're in for $300-350 anyway. The guides are only going to be another $200-250.

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i have know that my car needs new valve guides for about a year and the smoke and oil leaks are a constant reminder of the problem. I got an estmate to get the valve guides replaced and it was around 1100 $$ . im wondering if it would be cheaper to just replace the head at around 700$$ . would getting a new head solve the problem because if i could just get a new head it would be alot easer to install it then installing new valve guides.
please let me know if that would fix the problem or not.
Thank you .
Erik Carlson

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