I'd just like to say thankyou to all the brickboarders who posted with advice and encouragement while my Brick was stranded a long way from home. I finally made it home in the early hours of this morning, the only casualty along the way being the loss of one tire and two wheel studs.

I packed up a good lot of coolant and oil, put my newly rebuilt head into a crate and caught the 3:25 AM bus down to Singleton yesterday. I was blinking in the sunlight at 7:20 AM on a sunday morning. I rang up the lovely people minding my brick and had breakfast with them, started the job just before 9:00.

I didn't do the job alone - although I'd come prepared to - at 11 I was joined by Tod, a qualifed mechanic and the son of the family who'd taken me in. It was Tod who immediately felt the cylinder walls and spotted the damage done to the block when I overheated it. I have some scoring on no 2. Cylinder and there's more free play in the sides of the pistons than there aught to be. We laid a straight edge along the block couldn't find any warpage in it.

Tod is a methodical worker, originally qualifed as a heavy diesel mechanic, and while his kids were enjoying a day at Grandma's, he was happy to spend close to 12 hours all up getting the motor perfect. It was dark by the time we were ready to try starting her up.

Started first go, I love my brick. We let the motor run to warm up while we checked other things. There's was a bit of exhaust in the blow by on start up, so I guess those piston rings aren't quite what they were before I blew it up. Shame, it was a very nice block when I started the project.

I haven't hooked up a compression gauge to see how bad it is, but I might be in the market for a short block somewhere down the track, seems a shame to screw such a nicely rebuilt head down on to a crappy old block, but for the time being it goes well enough.

We had dinner while it cooled down, then re-torqued. I got on the road at about 10, with 315 kms of mountain road to go and no in-tank pump.

The car went very nicely, until I got about 30kms from home. I began to notice some vibration through the car. It could have been a million things wrong, but tires seemed the likely culprit. As the vibration got worse, I pulled over, just in time as my curbside rear blew out completely.

It was now 2 AM, and I had everything but a torch, I fumbled around in the dark to jack it up, and with condiderable force, removed the old rim. Trouble was, I took most of the thread off two of the old studs in the process, leaving me only able to attach three lug nuts.

By 3 I was willing to admit defeat, and hitched a ride into the next town to use the phone. The road service bloke prounounced my studs dead, but said I could gently drive on three. He then had to take my spare away to fix it, It was so old it had an inner tube.

Finally got home at 4, after travelling all night, and I'm in the market for two new tires and some wheel studs. My girlfriend thinks my car's ugly and the boys are calling it The Hearse but it's my car and I saved it from the crusher.

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Drive it like you hate it