Originally Posted By: funkymonkey1111
I really like the car. It's reasonably quick, pulls up the mountains without any hiccups, and had excellent snow performance when equipped with snow tires. Plus, it doesn't have any of the nanny safety [censored] that's on new cars.
Fix or no fix? One hears things--e.g., "once you have a HG fixed, the car is never the same...", etc. Obviously this repair approaches, if not exceeds the value of the car. But, if I can spend $3K and get another 80-100K miles out of it, I'd be happy.
My 2003 Forester had its head gasket fail at roughly 162K miles, in 2012. Most of its regular maintenance service, outside of oil changes, were done by the dealership, as was the head gasket. Like you, I also really liked the car and wanted to keep it going for years and 100K miles more, if possible.
At the time the head gasket was done, they did a number of other things that weren't scheduled to be done yet, but since the engine was taken out, I was told that those other services would be less costly due to labor charge reduction. I remember the water pump, and timing belt were among those additional items, which I was told I could skip if I preferred, but I chose to do them as well. There was no other engine damage that required special machining or repair. I may be wrong, but I think I paid around $2100, but that was a Forester, and was in 2012. The repair was done very well and I was very satisfied that it drove just the way it did before the head gasket leak.
Six years later, the car is now my son's with over 265K miles. It isn't being driven much nowadays as he lives in a city. Looking back, as luck would have it, it was a good decision for me, and I was happy to hand my son a car that wouldn't need any major fixes early on for him. His biggest expense on it so far has been an entire new exhaust system, the original finally broke down about two years ago.
Good luck with your decision, and as they say, YMMV