head gasket

I have an 89 buick century with the little gutless 4 cylinder with almost no power at all. My girlfriend drove out of town about an hour away. She calls me and says the car is acting up. I told her I would be up there to get her and we would figure it out but it would be a couple of hours. I guess she didn't want to wait so she drives the car 3/4 of the way and parks it at an outlet mall about 10 miles away. I go and get her and I get in and start driving the car and it acts like the head gasket went. It misses but its not like when a spark plug is taken out of the engine but rather a heavy sputter and the gutless car's power is reduced to negative numbers as it took nearly a full minute to get up to 45 mph. I figured she had done enough damage to it that everything in the engine had burned up. I get it home and I can see a little bit of smoke at the bottom coming from behind the driver front tire but there wasnt any smoke from under the hood when I opened it. Today I went out to look at it since it sat all night and cooled off. I assumed if it was the head gasket that all of the fluids would have burned out and/or that the coolant would have been mixed with the oil. I look on the dipstick and only see oil. I don't see any coolant in the oil cap and the coolant is still in the radiator. I had a corolla with a head gasket issue and it always burned up the coolant but that was because the thermostat and the fliuds were in fact mixed. Are there any other tests I can do to make sure it is or isn't the head gasket before I put money into a car this old? I bought the car for 200 bucks and had it for almost two years without too many issues but I don't know if I want to put money into something that might just be better off being replaced with something newer.

Why didn't you post this in the specific Buick Centruy forum? If the coolant is full and no white smoke out the exhaust why a head gasket?

Maybe a plugged catalytic converter, and the smoke you noticed was due to a REALLY hot converter?

-Rod

Do a compression check. A friend of mine blew a head gasket between #1 and #2, No coolant loss, but it sure ran like crap. If compression is good, a head gasket can pretty much be ruled out.