Q: or would you avoid buying a car in which the head gasket has gone in the past? head gasket was done 3months ago - would this be ok, or not enough time has elapsed for problems to show?
A: I don't agree with all these answers saying headgasket failure is inevitable. There are plenty of cars that will run to the end of their working life without a headgasket failure. All of the proper checks to make are as follows if you want to guarantee that the repair was done properly. I would not trust a repair just because it was done at the Peugeot dealership - Every professional knows how to do the job but some are less skilled than others and some like to cut corners... this is where the problems come from. 1. Compression test. Should be even numbers across all cylinders. But loss of compression on one or two cylinders is not necessarily the headgasket... but is still reason enough not to buy the car without expecting to have to do work on the engine. 2. Check the paperwork related to the repair. The head should have been properly processed. It is not good enough just to replace the gasket when doing the repair. The gasket failed for a reason. The cylinderhead needs to be checked for flatness (overheating can warp the cylinderhead and cause the failure) Then it needs to be crack checked and pressure tested. If the cylinderhead is cracked then a pressure test will show a leak and the cylinderhead is scrapped. You need to see the paperwork from the machine shop to proove that all of the proper checks were done to the cylinderhead before it was refitted to the car. 3. Receipt for the new gasket. Genunine parts are best. 4. As mentioned above... the car should've completed a few hundred miles with the new gasket before accepting it as in good order.