blown head gasket

I want everyone to try and understand this from the point of view of a low income 19 year old living on her own. Last year I got a 96 Lumina. 7 monthes later and I have a blown head gasket. I went to a mechanic who told me I was better off buying a new car than spending money to fix it. So I bought a 93 Grand Am from an unknown person. 2 weeks later I HAVE A BLOWN HEAD GASKET. The mechanic said that there was cracks in it but someone tried to weld them, and that made the situation worse. And since I spent my every last penny on buying this car, I dont know what to do. The mechanic said he found a rebuilt one for 600, which is out of my price range. I may be able to srounge up 400 tops but I feel because of my age, no matter who I go to they are going to try and screw me out of money I dont have. I dont know anything about cars, I think its a V4 engine but other than that, im completely helpless. Can someone help me by telling me what to do or where I could find one I could afford? I live in Grand Rapids, MI.

Something you may want to check into is the local school district. Many of the high schools in my area (Pittsburgh, Pa.) are associated with technical schools that train kids auto repair. These kids are supervised by an instructor so the work is going to be done right. You may want to contact the high school office and ask if they have such an association or contact the local Vo-tech to see if they have an auto repair school and if they do, will they work on the general publics private vehicles. I don't know if this will work but if it does in most cases they only charge for the parts, no labor since the kids do the work.

Good luck

Grand Rapids High Schools do have the exact type of help Hoag is mentioning, the hassle is your car goes on a wait-list, and can take a full school-year before it returned, but it IS worth checking them out!!!!!!!!

cuz, if what you describe is correct, you need a new head, all the labor to pull, replace, the gaskets, the retiming, and other good happy stuff. Generally, though I usually say it ain't so, dropping in a used plant is the same $$ as doing upper-end work. But then, you have another used engine, with whatever prob.'s it has, could go from frying pan to fire there. If the block is solid, no bad bad noises outside of the head gasket being blown, and if ya have decent comression in the cylinders, your better option is a remanufactured head.

Sadly, the labor is an intense 2-300$, cuz of what is involved. There are a few chemical treatments that will temporarily seal a bad head gasket, but they only temp., and the prob. remains, and will only worsen.

Wow...do I know this story...17 year old with 95 Grand Am and you guessed it...Blown head gasket...however, I knew it had this problem and I got the car for 40 bucks. Now mine should be fixed by sundayish and its gonna cost me a little over 600 bucks to get it fixed. I had to buy a new head, head gasket, and then do the retiming and all that good stuff. If you're lucky, you wont need the new head as that is gonna cost me $200(Im getting mine used but its off of a high performance model). My dad knows the guy and he said he is doing it for 600 bucks, I got a friend that works at Sunoco and he got an estimate for me and he said it was gonna cost me about the same price. Id say try for the school thing or just get the 600 dollars. Good luck.