[Diesel_Dave]

With all due repect, anyone who tells you to drive a car with a blown heat gasket is a complete idiot! The FE loss is the least of your worries. I could write a whole page on all the bad things that can happen. Just for starters, a blown head gasket can allow coolant to leak into the oil. That can make your oil corrosive, which will trash EVERYTHING! Even if you're going to swapthe engine you should at least save it for parts.

And the cylinder delete is a REALLY bad idea. For one thing, that would be an extremely involved process (more involved than replacing a head gasket). Secondly, that wouldn't even fix your problem--you're still going to have oil and/or coolant going places it shouldn't.

I'm not sure what tools/time/talents you have, but I'm with Frank Lee on this one. I'm not sure what type of engine you have, but it is mostly just takes a lot of time. It's mostly a matter of whatever parts you have to remove it get the head off. Depending on your engine, it could be a matter of just the valve cover and the fuel lines. The gasket itself should be pretty cheap.