I would really be interested in hearing why the bottom end is bad?

That doesn't make any sense based upon what you have told us.

For a head gasket to blow one of 3 things has to happen.
1.The gasket simply fails. Not likely
2.The motor was bad all along. Not likely
3.The motor overheated enough to cause the head to warp. Likely.

The fix is expensive because of all the crap that has to come off. So the question is simple, is it cheaper to fix the motor, or buy a new car. Almost always cheaper to repair provided there isn’t anything else wrong.

I can not stress enough that saying the bottom end is bad sounds really suspect to me. My next question is the person saying that wanting to “help you out” by buying the thing off you so they could part it out or something?

Finally if you decide to sell do it on eBay and part it out. List the parts separately and slowly scrap it. It’ll be cheap and it won’t be that bad if you just pull parts here n there. You can also say you’ll sell the whole car after any auction if the price is right.

You won't get much from the junk yard. They never pay much for cars working or not.

You might be able to get a few hundred dollars from a third party. Try advertising it on

Let the person know that the car has a blown head gasket. Many people see their non-working cars between $300-$500 selling them for parts.

If you do the write off, donating a vehicle can allow you to write off about the same amount on your Schedule A. If you don't itemize, then there's no place to actually take the deduction.

you might get more money from the junkyard if it does not run than donating it. but its usually easier to get the motor by itself and replace that than fixing the head gasket on some vehicles.