I will never understand how shops get away with telling people a Subaru engine must be removed to replace the head gaskets. I've had at least 7 Subaru's, and I've had to do head gaskets on most of them. I keep buying Subarus for their snow "worthiness" and their great reliability. The head gasket issue is real, no matter what improvements have been made by the factory, the H-Gs seem to go bad eventually, but once replaced I've never had a problem, and I keep all my cars until they hit 250 to 300k miles, and they are still running fine and still pass Calif smog test when they go to the next owner. 170k miles is about where all of mine have needed the head gaskets replaced. And never have I had to remove the engine to do so.

After the 1st one (that took more than 8 hours before I understood how easy it is to do), it became a very simple and quick job. Never more than 4 hours total (except for the time it takes to take the heads in to be machined (not rebuilt, just resurfaced). Subaru's have proven to be great cars, as good or better than any Jeep I've ever owned. Great reliability, cheap to fix (about 200 dollars to do the whole H-G job, including resurfacing at a machine shop, and this includes a new water pump too. My point is that the "dreaded" head gasket job on the SOHC Subaru engine is not a hard job at all, in fact it is kind of a fun 4 hour job that can be easily done with the engine still in the car.

Not saying you should do this, but it sounds similar to my Impreza.

Needless to say, the check engine light is always on, as I too need a new exhaust. As long as the light is solid, it will run fine. The rattly exhaust is hard to take, but it hasn't fallen off! If you have no money, like me, the car keeps on going. It's a blessing, really. The exhaust needs to be fixed for the engine light to be off. My clutch is going also. But it keeps going forward. I've had mine eleven years, and the parts are just now needing replacement.