I apreciate your responses so far. I feel awful because she definitely has no money for another car. She's a single mom doing her best but her skill suite doesn't include any auto common sense.
What failed to cause the engine to overheat?
Our working theory (which I should have included in my original post; shame on me) is that there was a slow leak in the engine coolant and it slowly drained away over time. This was a rare long trip for her. She usually drives a couple of miles around her town at a time. I think it's even possible she could have been running without coolant around town but never far enough to overheat the engine.
If she didn't know enough to quickly pull over with an overheated engine, you can't really trust her assessment of how long it was overheated IMO.
I agree.
Why would he start the van with the radiator cap off?... Worse case scenero she warped the cylinder heads and destroyed the headgasket.
I thought that was a diagnostic technique to see how much extra pressure was leaking out of the engine into the coolant system. For what it's worth, the car did not actually run, just chugged as he turned the starter and then died.
Yes, the mechanic thought she warped the cylinder heads and basically ruined her engine.
has it not started since the accident because you chose not to start it or because you have tried but it won't start up? as far as the blown head gasket. have you checked the oil by looking at the dipstick? does it look like regular clear/brown/black oil or does it look milky like it possibly mixed with coolant? that would be signs of a blown head gasket.
It would not start after the breakdown at all. Please don't laugh, but my relative tried jumping it with the help of a kindly passerby. Obviously that didn't do anything.
I just was reading about checking the oil and looking for the milky stuff as you posted. Unfortunately I had no idea earlier this afternoon.
What year, what mileage, what condition (besides the blown engine)?
I'm not totally sure on the particulars, but probably a market value of $6000-7000 (if running) these days, which is a similar price to what he thought it would cost to purchase and install another engine.
Commodity prices have bottomed lately and scrap metal isn't worth what it used to be.
So it sounds pretty much like the scrapping quote is on the up-and-up. Bummer.