It was Snazzy's turn to go to the French 480 club meet this year. The ferry prices had gone up a lot, so we decided to just take one car even though the meeting was in Compiegne, north of Paris rather than deep in the south.
Even though the temperature was in the 90s, all went well Friday and Saturday, until late afternoon when we returned to the gite where we were based. We'd spent the afternoon doing a roadbook (or treasure hunt). I'd last checked the oil and water temperatures about 2 or 3 miles before we got back and they were both normal. I pulled up to reverse into a space at the end of a row of 480s and suddenly warning lights lit up the dash like a Christmas tree and a great cloud of steam billowed out from under the bonnet. Engine off straight away so Al had to push me back revealing a large puddle of water with coolant. A quick look under the bonnet revealed all the wet was around the header tank and none anywhere else, so it looked as though she hadn't burst a pipe. Sunday morning we had about a dozen excitable Frenchmen around the nice cold engine bay all babbling away, surrounded by toolboxes they kept dipping into. Out came the fan or at least out came the fanblades, with the centre melted and no sign of a motor. That came out seperately. They topped up the coolant and started the engine with the cap off the header tank to watch the pattern of bubbles. The head honcho decided it was normal so the head gasket was unlikely to be blown. She had a slight misfire so he laid his hands on the block and pronounced the camshaft seals will need changing before much longer but predicted that the misfire would go once the engine settled down, and it did.
Meanwhile, we rang our breakdown insurers and were told that the procedure was to take the car to a local garage to see if it could be repaired. If not, she would have to go into secure storage for about 3 weeks before being repatriated, but only if the total cost was less than the car's value. They had a backlog due to the very hot weather, and we were warned that the storage charges were very expensive. With 220,000 miles on the clock I was having nightmares about leaving her there and then being told she wasn't deemed worth enough to come home so she was being scrapped. Then there was the question of luggage - we were told not to leave anything in the car but we couldn't possibly have carried it all for a return journey on public transport.
We were taken to the mid-day meal by one of our English-speaking friends and there was a lot of debate over the meal, again all in French. The upshot was that one local member shot off home to check his parts stash but sadly found he didn't have a fan. Plan b went into operation on Monday - another member did a 4 hour return trip to a 3rd member's house to collect a fan which his brother then fitted for us having taken a half day from work. He'd been given a list of instructions for refilling the coolant and double checking everything was ok. Much to my relief, Snazzy drove all the way home with no further issues.
One of the options Al and I had debated was to leave the car somewhere secure whilst we came home by train, hired a trailer and went back to pick her up. The only doubt was whether the hire company would allow us to take it out of the country. We checked when we got home, and they were fine with it as long as we told them in advance, so we'll know that's an option in future. We'd just need to check the Saab's insurers were ok to cover it and maybe pay an extra premium.
I'm very thankful she blew her top when she did, and the French all rallied round to sort it out for us. If it had happened after we'd left it would have been so much worse.
Snazzy has come home looking like this, and I really rather like the look without caps Comments welcome !
