Head Gasket Blown: Opinions?

For those of you who have been down this road, if my cylinder head isn't cracked and it just needs a new gasket, would u rather pay a shop to do it or do it yourself? I work 40 to 50 hour weeks and depending on how I'm feeling after work some days this could take me a week or two to complete. The shop I use quoted $450 on labor not including parts.

I know they'll wanna check the head and will wanna drop it off at a machine shop to let them check it, but most of the YouTube videos I've watched you can actually see the cracks. So price doesn't include them checking it. Anyways just wanted some opinions. Thanks guys!

Do it yourself. It can be done in about 3-4 hours

There are a lot of youtube videos on that to get a idea of what you'll have to do. Pull the head and take it a machine shop to clean and inspect for warp/cracks etc

Heads can fail in several different says. Sometimes cracks are visible, sometimes they show up in a magna flux, and sometimes you need to heat up the head before the cracks show up. If you pull the head and see cracks, you know you need another head. If not, then send it to the machine shop, test for cracks, and have it plained and a valve job done, including new valve stem seals. Use a Fel Pro gasket set. $450 sounds reasonable for labor if pulling and reinstalling the head is not something you want to do yourself.

labor book puts it at 4.9 hrs. So the shop is quoting at ~$90 per hr.

Pretty fair.

Labor $ is normal, but for that price, I'd put on a recon'd head.