How much do you guys think it would be to have a mechanic replace both head gaskets. I have white smoke coming out the exhaust and i am pretty sure it is the gasket. Also is it safe to drive the truck about 5 miles up to the shop?

 

I do not have a clue what it would cost to take it to a shop because I fix my own vehicles.

However, from your description of white exhaust I would not jump to any conclusions about bad head gaskets. What else makes you think they are bad?

 

The local shop to me will get you for about $1200 for a Ford V8, including skimming the bottom of the heads, new hoses, gaskets, water pump, and so on. They won't do a head gasket job without replacing water pumps, hoses and such.

You can do it yourself and the only "fancy" tool you need is a torque wrench. A head gasket kit typically is about $100 plus shipping (I used rockauto.com to get that price) and includes more than the head gaskets - intake manifold gaskets, valve stem seals, etc, so while you have the engine open you can do all of the fiddly little bits over so they don't plague you later.

For a person who has done this type of work before, this is a one day job. For a person who hasn't, it might take most of the weekend.

As with any leaking head gasket, they might hold that five miles, then again, they might not.

Assuming the white smoke is in fact indicting blow head gaskets. While that might be the case, it's not always.

 

head gaskets are not terrible hard to do if u have the skill but a shop will deffinately charge u out the rear for that job and try to get u to do more then ure wallet is comfortable with so be careful with ure decisions there. as far as driving the truck i wouldnt

 

I used a combustion leak tester to tell if it was the head gasket and it was. Instead of paying to get this fixed i went to napa, got the head gaskets and i brought it up to my buddies shop. Me and him got it done in about 8 hours. Solved the problem and only cost me about $100. The only reason i didnt think of doing it myself before is because my shop has 3 other project vehicles in it.