300 miles later ...

I guess that means we did it!!!

Before we left

As you can see below, the car was pretty, pretty, ... pretty packed. We (with Melanie), even had things under our legs. This, I have to say, is not very convenient to drive with.

Leaving!!

The car is totally packed, and are leaving in 10 minutes!!!

So far so good

The counter now indicates over 170 miles, which is more than half the distance that separates me from Paris. This means I've now booked the Ferry ticket for Saturday 19th April - hopefully I'll at least reach the boat!

Fluid Mechanics

I was advised to remove the calorstat. I learned that the calorstat's role is to keep the cooling liquid around the motor while is it not hot enough. Once the temperature rises, the calorstat opens itself and let the cooling liquid circulate freely in the entire circuit.

I first tried without the appropriate tools, and quickly realized it was not a good idea. So I took the car to go to B&Q, and bought the right tool. It then took me a week to access the calorstat, 1 day to find it, and 6 days where I tried to unscrew it (the screws had been damaged after my first attempt with the wrong tools ...).

Anyhow, I finally managed to get it out, to later realize that the circuit is leaking without it! Bad luck. So I cut it using a saw, and only kept the body (upper right on the image).

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Hopefully that'll work!!

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That's it!

So that's it!

I've got everything ... insurance, residential parking permit, and of course the car. Next week I'll run some tests to figure out how badly it looses cooling liquid.

Getting things together

So at this stage, I needed two things:

(i) a car insurrance. The best I found is ecarinssurance which will cost about 50£ a month. The good thing is that it's a "pay as you go" contract - so if the car breaks ... I can stop it!

(ii) a residential parking permit. 

The definitive email

Dear Matthew,

I am sorry I didn't get back to you earlier but it was a very difficult decision to make.
I have been thinking hard, and asked for lots of different opinions. As in Science, there are several contradictory theories as to what will happen if I try to drive with it to Paris.

But ... there is only one way to know! So I'll take it.

Thank you very much,
Best wishes,

Emmanuel

Towards making up my mind

So the people on the forum discouraged me in the first place. I was then picturing myself in the middle of nowhere, stuck in a car loaded with all my stuff ... not a nice feeling. Still I'm pretty stubborn (you may call that stupid depending on the situation ;)

So ... after some thinking I sent the following email to Matthew (the person giving his car).

Estimating the chance of success

I went on car forums to try to figure out the average lifespan of a car once the head gasket is diagnosed with a problem. I actually should mention that I know absolutely nothing about cars.

In particular, I posted a question on www.forum-auto.com (in french), which means "head gasket to be changed, how many kilometers to go?". I've had lots of answers and the general feeling was that the head gasket has to be changed.

How it started

The other day, someone from my institute (am working as a research scientist) sent an email around, with the following title:

Free car

That sounds interesting I thought - so I replied. Basically, the story is that the car is free to a good home ... but is broken. The head gasket - according to an expert - should be changed.

Now it turns out that 3 years ago, I had the exact same problem with my Polo from 91'. I just had to refill the cooling circuit with water every now and then but apart form that it was OK, it ran for 1000 or 2000 kilometers.

Since I've got to leave Cambridge (which is where I live at the moment) to go to Paris (which is where I am from) at the end of April, I thought - "Mhhhh, free car .... that might be worth trying".

So I sent back an email saying that I might be interested in the car.