Well I got it home... God she's rough, a true Sth Auckland car....
As I expected, stuffed radiator cap that doesn't hold pressure. Thermostat was stuck partially open but not enough to stand a chance of keeping it cool so it came out. Topped it up and started her up..... bubble bubble bubble. Yup, probably a head gasket or worse?
Bleed it as best we could and headed home (it was pissing down with rain). Decided to stay off the motorway and avoid the tunnel as that would be the worst place to break down at get the attention of the boys in blue.
She stayed mostly cool but lack of airflow in traffic and she eventually started to climb and not stop. Factory bloody tune not turning on the thermofan till 105°C. Topped her up and headed off again. Once past the tunnel we jumped on the motorway and temps came down and stayed steady until we hit the end of the tail on the Sth Western motorway, got off and went the rest of the way on the back streets. We stopped and topped her off one more time but it never overheated again.
Bought it off a reasonably young girl with a 3month old baby. Apparently it was her uncles car and didn't know much about it.
Trans was a bitt clunky but then the lack of trans fluid will do that. Power steering about as low as it can go without not working, oil.... yes. Brake fluid? it stops.
So she got her first bath when I got home, figured I may as well hit it as it's still hot!
It's surprisingly clean under here
Plan is to pull the heads off and access damage. Hopefully a set of gaskets will do the job.
Oil chance
Service trans
Flush the brake system
Figure out the LPG **** and how to get it to run/switch over to petrol.
It's has a definite miss when cold, once hot it cleared but as it cooled off it came back. Also worse at idle. Going to assume this is LPG/ignition related. It has fairly new leads on it. Can see the previous owners have changed dfi modules and coil packs (still in the boot).
Other than that it drove OK. Not the best tires (got it fully locked up with no ABS on wet roads) and the suspension is like a couch...! It smoked a little on first start but my son said it cleared soon after we took off.
