I have the shittiest luck possible, I swear. Today, I took a drive up Nine Mile Canyon, and my fucking Subaru ended up blowing ANOTHER head gasket. Luckily, it was blown between the combustion chamber and the outside of the engine, so I didn't have any exhaust gases getting into the cooling system and causing the engine to overheat, or else it would have been a very long walk home. I think only two cylinders were actually working the whole way home, and it was a slow drive. The engine actually did start overheating just outside of Price, so I pulled over for about five minutes and let it cool off, and I had to do it again just after I got into town, but after that I made it back home without the engine seizing up. Well, now at least I have a donor vehicle to pull the transmission from and put into my other Subaru. That car actually needs a little engine work, but it's much easier work than replacing the head gaskets again on the '88. I'll have to pull the transmission, clutch, flywheel, clutch pedal, driveshaft, and a few other things off the '88 and install them on the '87, but at least I'll still have a car to beat on when I'm finished. The only problem is that it'll take me awhile to get all that work done, so I'll still end up having to buy another car to get us by. We've been saving money since before our bankruptcy that we were going to use to buy a decent vehicle, but since I couldn't get a loan to pay for the rest, I'll have to use what we've saved to buy something just a little less shabby than the Subaru was before it shit out on me.
Update: I was just taking a look under the hood to figure out which head gasket was blown, and I realized that this noise I've been hearing for the past week or so, which I thought was the A/C compressor, is actually a broken connecting rod. So replacing the head gasket wouldn't have done much good, since the entire engine needs to be rebuilt now in order for it to run again. See, I told you, shitty luck.