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
did they tell you what the code was exactly? I'm struggling to figure out what code would be thrown for a minor head gasket leak on a 2003 vehicle... Misfire code would have to be a pretty bad leak, and low coolant idk, seems like a 2003 wouldn't even have a sensor for that, I know cars I've owned didn't. It's possible they're bullshitting you, or that they're telling the truth but the code is unrelated.
Whatever it is, I would bet you could get the code to go away long enough to pass smog, though I'm not very familiar with CA rules. It would eventually get worse though. I would get them to give you the exact trouble codes it threw, or take it someplace else that will read them for free/cheap. Not knowing what those are really changes my answer
As far as doing it yourself: it's a big job but with enough time and tools and patience and shit you probably could. The thing that will drive up the cost/PITA factor even more though, is that if you're doing the head gasket you really should take the head to a machine shop to get milled perfectly flat again, to give it the best possible chance of lasting as long as possible. The last time I did this, I ended up having shot valves in the head that had to be replaced as well (also a suzuki coincidentally), but yours probably aren't that bad.
If you were in the rust belt I'd be telling you to consider throwing in the towel on the car, but in CA its more likely to be worth fixing, as it won't rust out from under you in the next 2-5 years lol.
But I would HEAVILY encourage you to check for yourself what the codes are, get some second opinions, and look for signs of head gasket leaks (coolant in the cylinder will cause it the exhaust to have white smoke, coolant in the oil will make it lighter and more opaque like a milkshake, and probably leave a residue on the oil cap).
Either way I don't think there's much sense in throwing it away until/unless you have to.
Oh, and in addition to the retirement program another commenter mentioned, there is also a program where the state will pay up to $1200 towards an emissions related repair. Its a bureaucratic process and unclear if your repair would qualify but it seems like it would if it caused you to fail smog. I think you'd have to take it for the smog test and have it fail before you could apply for that. link: https://www.bar.ca.gov/consumer/consumer-assistance-program/index#otheroptions
If you go get your car smogged, they'll tell you the codes. I don't know where in California OP is, but around me most smog places give you 30 days after a failed test to bring the car back for a free retest.
I found the O'Reilly VERI SCAN diagnostic printout I got before my first round of mechanic visits. The code is P0128 "Coolant Thermostat". "Code P0128 indicates that the Coolant Thermostat had a fault (Coolant Temp Below Thermostat Regulating Temperature) for a predetermined period of time."
The first time I took it to the shop they did the 'most likely solution' of replacing the thermostat. When the engine light came back on and I took it back, they said they verified it was the gasket by "putting pressure on it and seeing that the pressure on the inside went back up"
Are you getting white smoke out of your exhaust?