I don't know what I should do and this website is basically what goes for my social support system these days, so I'd like some advice please.
So I drive a very old car that until recently I didn't use much. It's from 2003 and it has less than 150k miles on it. It has a check engine light that I learned today comes from a tiny crack in the (a?) cylinder head gasket that's causing me to lose coolant. They quoted me 3-4k USD to replace it.
If they said 2k I might have been able to melt my debit and credit cards at the same time MAYBE. But 4k I need a loan for.
It's possible that this place is just a ripoff. I'm partially just talking this out right now so I should really get on the phone and find out if I can find something that won't break me.
Part of why it seems like it might be a ripoff is that I can find the parts (according to my completely uneducated and untrained figuring) on autozone.com for like 250 bucks. Maybe I can just do it myself? Maybe my landlord has tools? Or I can rent some maybe?
The guy at the car doctor said that if I wasn't going to do the repair I should probably trade it in sooner than later while it still holds value. Down this path I might really start crying about needing an adult though. A whole branching tree of decisions to make afterwards.
And to bring up an added complication: part of why I don't have a solid chuck of the downpayment of a house on hand to deal with this is that I was semi-homeless up until three months ago (friday is the anniversary). A downstream complication to that is that I never received my auto registration renewal from the state of CA. And by the time I realized it was a thing I should have had to deal with already, my shit expired. I'm pretty sure they're going to make me do a smog check which requires that I don't have an engine light on. So it's extra fucked to be driving with it right now. Oh and my insurance dropped me over a dispute over late charges I refuse to pay because they didn't tell me I owed them money and sent shit to the wrong address over and over.
So I guess an informal poll:
A: I shop around for a mechanic that's willing to fix my cars for the clothes off my back + fill up my credit card again ( T_T ) IF I CAN FIND ONE (and if not I guess take out a loan)
B: I buy the parts/find the tools and see if it's possible to do it myself, on like, a weekend.
C: I throw in the towel on my car and try to find a replacement somehow despite being broke enough to be here
D: Something I'm not thinking of.
I fucking hate this. I hate cars. I wish I could bike. I wish I could take transit. I hate having this single point of failure in my life that can completely sweep my still shaky legs out from under me, which I just now finally got up onto. I need advice because this decision could literally be the fucking end of the world for me. Yay.
edit: the specific car is a 2003 Suzuki Areio
That’s a little on the high side but not far off. If you had like a Subaru or something that’s a pain in the ass to work on then I’d understand.
Shop around a little, but more important than price is quality. A head gasket is the part that allows the two halves of the engine to seal up and contain explosions as well as correctly conduct oil and coolant to where they each need to be. It’s an important part and replacing it will have at the very least the whole ass engine took apart.
So make sure you trust the people doing the work and keep an eye on your coolant while you’re going around getting quotes.
Long term? You gotta have a car, and if you can only have one it needs to be newer and in better shape. If you have to have old cars, you gotta have two so you can not be fucked when one goes down.
You know if you can have a second 20 year old car. If you can’t, try to climb the years ladder a little once this one’s repair is paid off.