I know this won't make things any better for your
instance, Michael, and I'm a bit embarrased to admit
to this happening.
But about 1 year ago, I had an 'overheating incident'
in my car. Someone had come into the office around
10:00 and said "Terry, your fan is running." and I
realized that the stupid bugger had been running for
near on 2 hours (much longer than required to cool the
engine off). It was the mechanical thermostat sticking
again, usually a good tap would get it to engage and
turn the electronic fan off, but despite multiple hits
the fan wouldn't cut off. So I disconnected the
electrical connection to the fan so the battery
wouldn't drain before the end of the day.
Well, at the end of the day, as I sometimes tend to
do, I turned the car on and let it idle for a minute
until it got to operating temperature, and went inside
to pack up my computer and other things. When someone
grabbed me and started asking me some questions about
a work issue that was pending. Before I realized It,
I'd been dragged into a meeting with three people and
a good 20-30 minutes had passed, and when it finally
hit me that the car was still ideling I remembered
that I never reconnected the thermostat for the fan!
(I'd pulled off the mechanical fan years ago, so there
was nothing moving air through the engine bay.)
I screamed a profanity which starts with an S and
immediately darted out of the conference room where I
was standing without explanation to onlookers. When I
got outside steam was pouring out from under the hood,
and the overflow bottle was boiling over. The
temperature gauge was pegged and though I'd now turned
off the car, I realized that the engine was pretty
much toast. I didn't wait for it to cool off. I just
opened the radiator cap...which you should never do!
But found the obvious fact that the radiator had
emptied. After wiaiting about a half hour and beating
my head against a concrete pillar for the same amount
of time, I refilled the cooling system with straight
water (about a gallon) and restarted the engine
expecting the engine to throw a rod before I got home
or before I got to the mechanic shop the following
day. But low and behold, that british made cast iron
four banger actually had nothing wrong with it that
they could find. Bearings were fine and there was no
seepage from the head-gasket. They told me to keep an
eye on water loss from the cooling system. But nothing
else.
Here it is about a year and 15,000 miles later and
still no head gasket leak. And as strange as it may
seem, the engine actually ran better after that
incident. Amazing how even my negligence was unable to
kill this engine. This car is definately a keeper.
-Terry
'76 spitfire 1500 w/bullet proof '77 engine
Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
http://auctions.yahoo.com/
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