okay, so I have an 04 mazda 3 sedan. It's only got 47k miles on it, but it was a used car and it's been in an accident before. I'm also a female, which means I'm car-retarded and can't drive and kinda screwed up when the battery died, tried jumpstarting/starting it too many times and in turn caused the engine to overheat.

I take it to both a mazda dealership and pepboys and they tell me the problem is a blown head gasket and they need to take the cylinder to a machine shop (??) etc etc.
Pepboys also said I have water in the oil and they need to do a full oil flush, spark lug replacements etc etc while mazda's trying to tell me the reason the cost is so high is mostly because of labor (8+ hours) involved and they have to do a valve grind (??)

They're quoting me around $2400 (incl parts and labor) and up (mazda quoting me $1200 not including parts if it needs to be replaced and said the gasket part itself from a mazda dealership factory is around $2200). It hurts that my baby's in such trouble and I'll accept killing my wallet if the car really needs it to be fixed but I just want to know if I'm being ripped off just because I'm sadly a wo-man. Please any thoughts or advice is appreciated

 

Hmmm, a couple of points:
[ul][*]You should be able to jump-start your car thousands of times and never affect the head gasket in any way shape or form.[*]If the head gasket is in fact hosed, then you are looking at a fairly pricy repair, however, I would NEVER let Pep Boys touch something like this.[*]Were I in your shoes, I would find a good independent shop that specializes in Mazdas and have them give you a quote / do the work.[*]You might want to explore a used motor from a wreck, that might be the better/faster/cheaper solution to your problem.[*]Regardless of how much it ultimately costs to fix the engine, you still need to figure out why the original one over heated, and that couldcarry a reasonably expensiveprice tagas well (thinking maybe a new radiator here)[/ul]
Keep us posted.