tpollauf wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 4:22 pm
Bookworm wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 3:34 pm
That's a 'pull the engine' repair,
NEGATIVE ....... it can be done with engine in the car BUT it's a bit more difficult, and will take an experienced mechanic a full day to do it.
My 2004 Vibe GT was leaking pretty good and kept placing cardboard under the cart wherever I parked it so it didn't stain the concrete. Was going to fix this repair myself BUT thanks to the pandemic hitting us, one of my buddies who owns a garage business, got real slow and needed the work. So he agreed to tackle this task. $480 in labor later and the job was done! Money well spent
They changed out the water pump while it was apart and seeing how it was still original, I said OK to that. So it all depends on the shop/garage and motivation of their workers. Good luck!
Lucky you - I couldn't really find anyone that didn't agree it was a pull out job - and a full day of repair here would probably have been $1000 plus parts.
Still - I have a heavily torqued driver fender (deep into the engine compartment). It was a point to say "not worth it". If I'd found a car with a blown engine and a good body? I'd have gone for it, and take it to the reputable engine rebuilder to do a rebuild swap (Probably Thunderbolt Engines and Transmissions. 75 years in business).
It is nice... in a schadenfreude kind of way, to know that I wasn't the only one to end up with that problem.
Oh - to fix the concrete stains? Oven cleaner. It's not an instant fix, but if you hose it with the lye (you can use drain cleaner that's sodium hydroxide), let it sit, and then rinse it, three or four sessions makes the oil stains disappear. It saponifies the oil. That's how I got rid of the stains that have ended up on the driveway when the 1) oil pain splashed, 2) leaking started, and 3) when the cardboard shifted when I'd put it underneath.