I've had a 94 jetta for a while and I don't work on it myself Recently, it started to drip oil. A good VW independant shop said it was the head gasket and itis scheduled for nextweek. The car has a lot of miles (about 175,000). I don't want to spend a lot of money on it but it is my only way of getting to work everyday which is a 50 mile round trip.I haven't had a lot of maintenence on it since I got it a year and a half ago other than brakes andminor things. I park it in my dad's driveway and he doesn't want to see any oil drips.

I have never done the timing belt and don't know when it was done previously. Is there any danger of it breaking and damaging the engine?

Is thereelse Ishould have done at the same time they are doing the head gasket that wouldhelp make this car last longer?

 

Well first of all you said you didn’t want to spend much money but changing the head gasket is going to probably cost you a pretty penny... It consists of removing the engine head from the block and then scraping off the old gasket to put a new one. In this process they will also have to remove the timing belt so therefore I would get it replaced since there at it. It would cost you a lot less then changing it some other time. On top of that if it was never changed it could break then you could potentially scrap your motor because your pistons could hit the valves and screw up everything….

Good luck !!!