exilous

Hey whats up everyone? I'm new to the forum here figured I'd make a post ask some questions.

Alright down to business, my girl has a 97 4 door cav 2.2L she just rounded 100k and i've been doin all the servicing for almost a year now. So i did plugs wires belt all sorts of stuff at 100k but I didnt do the antifreeze i hadnt had time. well sure as hell the thermostat went bad and cause the engine to overheat real bad while she was driving to work the other day. So i went to go rescue the car barely made it to her dads and found out the thermostat went bad. I towed it back to my shop looked it over and antifreeze is flowing pretty good out between the head and the block and steam comes out of the overflow tank. I had my friends mechanic swing by and he thinks there is a crack in the head, not a big deal.

So the real question is what do you guys think I should do? I'm very mechanically inclined ive worked on a lot of older vehicles and built a few engines but nothing small and compact like these things. I'm thinking about doing it up a little. Maybe get a performance head, while ive got that off I'm definetly thinking complete new performance exhaust or at least a 2 piece header setup and making my own pipes from there out (i have the use of an exhaust pipe bender) and most likely an air intake of some sort. So I need some advice on brands positive or negative what I should look for and so on.

Like I said this is my first time working in smaller engines and small cars so I don't know what kind of brands are best so leave me some feed back,thanks a bunch!

Segfault

Contemporary heads are very fragile. Just driving it while coolant is low can result in warped head. Leave alone low coolant and overheating. It WILL result in warped head. One could machine and weld and machine such a damaged head and still end up buying a new one.
So my advise is - get a new [used?] one now.