I have a chevy 350 that puffs a little smoke at start up. How much would a shop charge to replace the valve seals?

 

Depending on the shop and labor rates, and how you want it done, probably upwards of $300-500. Now if you did it yourself, with an air compressor and a few tools, under $100. This is all just a WAG.

 

They will usually have the heads redone and sent out to be machined. I’d say closer to $1000 for that but the good news is you can get your heads ported and polished while you’re getting them done.. I haven’t found a shop that will just do the valve stem seals, but I’m sure they’re out there and would be much cheaper..

At least blue smoke on startup isn’t a huge, urgent deal.. most of these cars did this back in the day because people wouldn’t put money into fixing it. Sometimes it would happen just from a car sitting over winter and not getting started up enough..

 

As a shop owner, I would say 2 hours per side, plus valve stem seals, and new valve cover gaskets. Probably in the $500 range. A good shop would reccomend new springs while they are out as they are cheap.

Pulling off the heads is going to be a LOT more. There's a ton of cleanup involved and depending on the age and what intake it has you may open a Pandora's box of pitted surfaces, machine shop labor, and additional parts. I encountered a severely pitted TPI intake base on my 86, and a shop isn't going to media blast it, fill the pits with DevCon, and carefully block sand it to restore the sealing surface - it's too labor intensive. They will just get a replacement. Expect it to be $1500 to $2500 depending on the shop and how much cleanup/restoration/replacement has to get done. Remember the average shop in a large metro area is about $110 to $140 an hour and parts markup is between 100 to 300 percent. Just the way it is to keep our doors open sadly.

GD

 

My mechanic charged $250 plus parts.

 

...That's how much I paid too.. -of course, I pulled the heads myself. They cleaned 'em up real nice. I had z28 springs installed because I did a cam swap too. This was about 10 years ago, but I hope the price wouldn't be TOO much more.

 

Labor has gone WAY up in the last 10 years. You are talking pre economic recession pricing back in 2007.

Depends a lot on your cost of living in the area you live.

That said, if you pull the heads off yourself then it's going to be a LOT cheaper. I would say $250 10 years ago was very expensive. My cylinder head guys will sell me completely rebuilt Vortec (stock rebuild) heads for $300 a pair. They will do everything under the sun performance wise to a set of Vortec heads for $500 if I supply the heads. Still not worth it when I can get built aluminium heads for $813 shipped and don't have to change the intake base....

GD

 

The fix, when these cars were under warranty, was to install the "umbrella seals" and it took a few hours, but the heads and intake were not removed.

I had both my TPI cars done when they were covered still, back in 1992ish.

 

I got a quote $350 to do valve stem seals. I will use that $350 towards replacing my engine she will just have to puff a lil smoke for a while longer.

 

The other "fix" for this is to not worry about it. Until and unless the oil level in the sump becomes low, it presents no real problem. A little extra upper cylinder lubrication on startup shouldn't be a detriment. My '86 TA has done this since at least 1991, when it had just over 18K on it. It now has right at 50K on the odometer and still does it, and I've never had to add oil between changes.

 

When my 87 had the blue smoke at cold startup a lot of mechanics would say it’s fine.. not worth fixing.. the oil level never went down between changes..

I’d get a lot of crap from car guys that would say “dude, you gotta fix those valve seals!”.. so I did.. no difference other than the blue smoke gone

I did get the heads done which was nice.. but mostly just tired of getting crap from having blue smoke puff out if the car sat for more than a few hours..

If it’s messing with your plugs that can get annoying, but not a huge deal