I have only done this once. Not long after Mrs DP and I met, we headed down to Cornwall for a long weekend. At the top of Porlock Hill, we decided to stop and go for a stroll to take in the sights. The second the engine was switched off, the entire contents of the cooling system of my old Sierra were ejected through the expansion tank overflow pipe.

I had a 2 litre bottle of water which I put in. This barely touched the sides. After letting the engine cool for as long as we could, we drove on. It took only a few minutes for the temperature gauge to bury itself off the red. I took the decision to keep going until we found somewhere safe to stop. This transpired to be a pub a mile or so up the road. As I pulled into the car park, the back wheels locking up told me the engine had finally seized, and the steam, smoke, and frying oil oozing from every surface told me I'd pushed my luck a little far. I can still remember the acrid stench emanating from under the bonnet. Burning oil, boiling coolant, and hot, hot metal. As someone normally with mechanical sympathy, I was ashamed of myself. I actually still am.

But the Pinto engine was a bit special. In a show of strength and defiance to embarrass any modern engine, it not only started first turn of the key once cooled, but got us another 400 odd miles reliably (albeit with a bit of an appetite for coolant) until I got it home and changed the head gasket the following weekend. Cranking the engine with no1 plug out sent a jet of rusty water about 3ft out of the plug hole :-) And still it ran.

Actually actually

On the "Gender specific" subject

As a still wet behind the ears novice driver, needless to say whose confidence exceeded their actual ability, I was multi point turning a Hillman Hunter in a confined space in a cramped car park. On my last reverse I allowed I would make it out forward with the next cut. Except I didnt, I caught on the wheel arch of a big shiney new Volvo estate.

I immediately stopped, got out and spoke in to the lady who was sitting in the passenger seat, She looked at me in a kindly way and said " dont worry son, the way my husband treats cars, I'll just ask him in a couple of days, what did you catch on, theres a scrape on the mudguard".

I thanked her profusely, and in a reciprocal fashion have extend the same courtsey to a couple of people who have caught on me in a minor way.

cheers

M

A past friend of mine did a similar thing in his X REG 1.3 Cavalier

12 miles away the seal on the water pump broke, spurting coolant out as fast as you could imagine.

He decided the best plan of action was to top up with water and drive 12 mile or so home to his farm

This worked fine for about 43 miles when all of a sudden on came the radiator fan and the temp gauge went into the red.

However he persevered the temp gauge well over the red, we got 300 yards away from his house whereby the power to the engine tailed off, and as he managed to limp towards the farm  house there was virtually no power at all, blue smoke started pouring through the dash vents, where at this point we jumped out the cav and ran for it. Thinking it was going to go up in flames.

We left it for a couple of hours to cool down, and topped back up with water and it started (after turning for bit) but ran brilliantly, replaced the pump and within that weekend it was fine again

Edited by WellKnownSid on 24/03/2010 at 14:37