Three hundred and fifty dollars. Fog lamps, a sunroof, a pile of accessories already fitted, and a head gasket that had already given up.
We knew exactly what we were buying. A blown head gasket means the seal between the engine block and the cylinder head has failed, so the cooling system and the combustion chambers start leaking into each other. The car still runs. It just runs on borrowed time, and the countdown is measured in how long you can go before the temperature gauge starts climbing.
The plan was accordingly simple: drive it until it died. It refused to. For two years it did everything we asked, passed multiple Warrant of Fitness checks without argument, and behaved like a car with nothing wrong with it. The only tell was distance. Around the thirty minute mark, on any drive, the needle would begin its slow walk to the right and we would pull over and wait.
Eventually I decided to fix it properly. I pulled the head off, had the mating surface machined flat, fitted new gaskets, and torqued everything down in the correct sequence by the book. It blew again almost immediately after the first start.
That was the end of it. We sold the shell for scrap, which felt harsh for a car that had been so willing for so long.
Enthusiasm gets you as far as taking something apart. Putting it back together correctly is a different skill, and I did not have it yet.
