Tarago no-go

 

After a couple of contented months with the recently acquired Toyota Tarago building its reputation as trusty family bus about a week ago it decided to throw in the towel and properly pooped its pants. A lumpy start in the mornings brought about plumes of pure white smoke pouring from its exhaust as it drove off down the road. Upon closer inspection I found it was getting through water in the cooling system far quicker than beer at a Saturday afternoon footy game and it all pointed to a blown cylinder head gasket.

 

In case you don’t know these particular multi-purpose people movers (minivans over here) are remarkably compact in the design of their mechanical parts, the engine being packed away under the front seats rather like a workman’s truck, leaving bags of room inside for eight seats and luggage. There are front, four and rear-wheel drive variants and ours is the latter but this has no useful effect on the layout of the motor, it being squashed into a space barely big enough for a suitcase in all the models. It struck me that a look at the internals was going to be tricky to say the least, but might give some more clues to confirm my initial suspicions.

 

After peering through the inspection hatch under the passenger seat that lets you top up the oil, check that the engine is still in place and not a thing more I decided it was going to require professional help.

 

On its final run to the garage it almost overheated after boiling up a radiator full of water and neatly washing out the cylinder bores, so I parked it on the forecourt and went to discuss the crisis. Our local mechanic is in for a treat as he rightly summed up the enormity of the job in hand.

 

“Well, it’s a mission to get one of those engines out mate, at least a day or two”

 

Indeed. I believed his every word; I couldn’t even find the spark plugs!

 

However we soon entered into the pro’s and con’s and feeling dangerously like someone was trying to have me over it became quite apparent that it was going to be easier and therefore cheaper for us to replace the motor with a guaranteed reconditioned unit, after having the entire cooling system checked and overhauled. After all something caused the head gasket to blow in the first place. Reconditioning the engine that’s in there means taking it out anyway in order to get the cylinder head off to send it for re-working, reassembling, replacing etc, etc so I submissively agreed that would probably end up costing similar to a whole new engine. Well, I knew it would, matey-boy would see to it that it did! And so the new engine route was agreed upon.

 

My own suspicions point to the odometer because for a 1991 model car it has an awful lot of history packed into the displayed 271,460 kilometres.  More like 471,460 kms if it could tell me the truth. As to when it might have shed those couple of hundred thousand k’s I’ll never know and in his defence I don’t actually think it was the bloke we bought it from. Considering how many second hand cars I’ve bought and the circumstances in which I’ve bought them I suppose it was my time for something to catch me out, although nothing pointed to this when we got it and we have done over 5000kms in it since.

 

With the Tara-no-go up on blocks in the garage the Merc was pressed back into daily service and the quiet relaxing atmosphere within was once more transformed into a gladiatorial arena not dissimilar to a riotous children’s soft-play area with plenty of shouting, squabbling and general sibling friendliness. It certainly felt like there were about twenty kids in there at times. Added to the fact that due to the endurance hike to the station I was then restricted to leaving the house at school run time and being picked up not too late that they all got to bed on time, my hectic work schedule had just gone ballistic.

 

Although I must confess that my stress simply vanished into thin air when I emerged brain dulled from the station to see the old Rocket sitting with a pile of faces hanging out of various windows shouting and cheering for Papa as if I were at the head of a marathon run about to break the tape! It’s been a great way to end the day.

 It’s also been faintly amusing as we’ve passed the garage each time and Ted checked on the progress giving us up to the minute reports on how much of the car was hanging out of its belly as it sat up high on the ramp. No doubt there’ll be absolutely nothing remotely, let alone faintly amusing about the bill when that turns up. Fainting might just be the wrong word to be using in this context. 

True to his word our man at the Clinic acquired the replacement unit and kindly opened up parts of it for me to inspect and, as far as I could tell, it certainly looked like a good solid unworn unit. Left to working his magic WXQ sat upon the ramps for a few days and at the close of last week had been transformed back into a fully running vehicle and what a relief it was to put all the kiddie seats back in place. With Lottie’s help I was able to clean out the Merc of accumulated cereal snacks, sweeties, Lego pieces, hot wheels cars, socks, fast-food joint cheap nasty toys and enough pieces of paper to start a mill. Mum was kind enough to go to the garage and collect the car, graciously paying the bill with the “only to be used in emergencies” piece of plastic, thus sparing me any fainting fits and for now normality has returned to the transport division chez Heatley.