Ranting and Raving

The Saturn has died, at least to me anyway, because I no got money to fix. Mechanic who looked at it told me the block was cracked, but since the estimates he gave me were BS of the highest degree, I'm not sure I believe that 2500 for a used engine, 3500 for a rebuilt. That's a difference of 1000 dollars between used and rebuilt (I expect the labor would be the same) when I can get the part for 825 delivered. How can the delta between used and rebuilt be more than the rebuilt part unless someone is snowing me.

The symptoms, BTW are oil in the coolant, coolant in the oil, and a bit of oil/humidity out the tail pipe, but nowhere near the "billow" stage. Seepage where head meets block was evident as well.

So neighbor lady gets wind of it, offers a diagnosis of a blown head gasket, and says that she wants to fix it. She will either buy the car off me for the cost of the tow, or fix it of the course of 6-8 weeks for between 400 and 800 bucks, plus parts I furnish.

This would be a great deal, except I cannot afford the parts right now and I am not confident in the longevity of an engine that has had Prestone-Valvoline aioli coursing through its crank case - I hear seals and antifreeze make poor bedfellows. So for a hundred bucks, she has a weekend project for the next month on which she will turn a 10 or 20-fold profit, while I make up some of the immediate costs of this fiasco to the household budget. It's a raw deal, but in many ways these days I find I have all the options of a butterfly pinned to the cork.

Could I have done it myself? Perhaps. But I'm not completely certain the block isn't cracked, and it would be a first time for me. So I get the cost of the tow back and it becomes Someone Else's Problem.

I feel bad about it. If I were more flush with cash, I would have had a trustworthy mechanic (i.e. not the guy who looked at it when it first broke down) do an engine swap. I'd have done that for that car, if I could.