Possible blown head gasket on 93 camry

Help please, car running rough for the first 10 seconds or so when starting from cold, then fine for rest of day, had new cambelt, leads, sparkplugs, radiator, steering rack last year, have been told "around" $2000 to fix if indeed it is the head gasket. Am I going to be throwing good money after bad getting it fixed again.93 camry V6 3L.180,000 kms.my husband away for work for the next few weeks, I hate dealing with car problems, some advice would be great.many thanksLouise

Yep probably rear head gasket, the block and/or head will no doubt be corroded at the mating surface(s), I've seen one actually crack the block too and it wasn't picked up first time round and still ran rough, overheated and consumed coolant when the cylinder heads were overhauled and head gaskets replaced. They ended up re-sleeving the block with liners. I think all in all, they spent about $2-3k on the whole ordeal and most of the labour was done by the owner himself! After getting the engine back together it still didn't quite run right and he sold the car (had high kms on it) for something silly like $2000.

Basically with a Camry of that age which isn't worth a great deal, it would be completely un-economical to repair either by fixing the engine or fitting another 2nd hand engine (which could do it all over again). You're better off selling the car as is to someone and get back what you can (prob about $500-1000) and with the $2000+ you would have had to spend on the Camry to fix it up, go looking for another car.

If all it's doing is running rough for the first 10 seconds and using a little coolant but not yet overheating or down on power in general I would continue to use it and basically run it into the ground until you have saved up money for a replacement.

Running rough = blown head gasket! , (yeah right) .

be gasketor craked v6 toyota are $hitheaps.

Thanks for your replies, only reinforced what I guess I already knew, won't be getting it fixed, will run it into the ground then, isn't using water yet, and still runs ok otherwise.any guesses on how long till it dies completely.thanks again Louise

You could try adding a product called a sealwell cube to the cooling system, it might help it along and delay any further leaking of the head gasket, they can work quite well in cases where only a small amount of leakage is happening.Bit late to tell you now but these things are amongst the worst petrol engines that Toyota ever made.The above issue is well known and an ongoing pain as its not easily solved.

Yes, the cylinder partly fills up with water after turning the car of as there is pressure in the cooling system and then on restarting it will run on 5 cylinders until all the water has been cleared out