Thanks for the tip friend, but I'm afraid I'm quite a bit like you. My integrity is worth far more than a few hundred bucks. I'd love to save the money, but not at someone else's expense.

I appreciate your solid point. Helps put things in perspective.

Those are all good tips - called my local euro specialist and he talked around the possibility of $2500 if they did an entire head job, looked at timing belt, water pump... etc... Said he'd almost suggest another engine but that puts me at roughly that same $2500 If you were looking to list this car...

I think this is worst case scenario, gentlemen:

Starting from crank over toward battery

65 - 0 - 0 - 20 - 20

Head gasket or worse?

The coolant was leaking somewhere very close to the firewall. If we left the AC on in the car when turning off the ignition, things seemed ok. If we turned off the AC in the car right as we got home and turned off the ignition, a ton of water would come pouring out... as in, you could hear it. I cou...

About to run compression test - very disappointed with state of plugs - they were new in the spring... Volvo OE They are black, covered in soot, one is quite oily, and they all seem to have a small amount of "grit" on them? Looks like tiny debris, almost sand like? A little larger than san...

My wife swears the temp gauge never flinched above dead normal. I have maybe $1k to work with. Our budget is ultra right at the moment so my next thought is what is my car worth with a blow head gasket? Could I get 2k out of it and take my 1k and buy something closer to maintenance free? Like a very...

I see... those are all really helpful points I think maybe I'll see if I can get AAA to tow it to a local shop and find out what I'm up against... still on the fence about repair or sell for parts and buy something else. 180k in really great shape otherwise - new timing belt, water pump, new pvc sys...

Thanks for both of your thoughts - head gasket scares me a bit - we'd just replaced the water pump and timing belt Why would the engine turning over too quickly lead one to a head gasket? I'm sure I don't fully understand. If it was bad enough to stop the car running while exiting the highway, do yo...

My wife drove our car with a slow coolant leak and it appears the leak increased dramatically in the course of the 35 mile highway drive. As she was exiting the highway, it seems to have lost power and coasted to a stop. It had to be towed back to my house and was certainly low on coolant. The hood ...

Wow... 30MM?

Is there a good source for engines? I'm assuming they'd all be rebuilt at this point? What is a ballpark of labor hours for replacing an entire engine?