“I’m starting the stopwatch...now!”  I pushed the accelerator to the floor.  The 4 cylinder in the little Toyota sedan was whining up to 6,000 rpm. 

 “6, 7, 8,” my friend counts.  We are just passing 50 miles per hour. “10, 11, 12,” he counts.

“Sixty,” I said.  The frown only grew on my face.

I look to the left, and a 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe flew past me in the left lane.  My foot was still pushing the right pedal to the floor.  The frown didn’t go away.

It was late, finally getting home from a wave of disappointment.  I tapped the Marketplace icon inside the Facebook app.  The deal was staring me straight in the eyes.  $500 for what looks to be a clean Cadillac coupe with blown head gaskets.

It didn’t take long for my friend and I to take a trip to Illinois with 10 bottles of distilled water.  We knew what was coming, we needed to make a 2 hour trip with a car that overheats and burns all of the coolant away every 10 minutes.  It sounded like a great idea.  We arrived in Illinois, and $450 later we were heading home with a new car.

It didn’t even take 15 minutes until we needed to pull over.  We rotated the coolant cap counterclockwise, and WHOOSH!  The cap flew off.  Water vapors exploded from the cooling system.  SSHSHHSHSHHSHHHSHHSH.  We let the cooling system calm down, and filled it with distilled water.

With 5 hours elapsed, Google Maps said we had 30 minutes to go.  “Here we go again,” I said.  After navigating the pile of empty water cartons, we found 3 more bottles that were full of water.  We’re going to make it home.

Past 10:00 PM, my friend and I were parting our separate ways.  We were almost home, and I knew this car could make it.  

I couldn’t sleep that night.  My next step is to drop the subframe, take the engine off of the subframe, and disassemble the engine to install head studs and a brand new head gasket.  This would cost at least $1500 in tools and parts, excluding everything else that is wrong with the car.  How am I supposed to afford this?  What am I supposed to do.

‘Hey Google, how can I fix my head gasket?’  I was browsing through the internet, until I found this on a webpage:  

“ThermalweldTM will fix your head gasket, or your money back within 30 days.”  

Is this a real product?  I looked up a video of Thermalweld, and the first vehicle that the product is shown to fix has the same engine as my car.  

Being the impulsive buyer I am, I took their word for fixing the head gaskets and I bought Thermalweld.  The arrival date was very soon.

The instruction manual consisted of a modification to the cooling system and a coolant flush with distilled water.  Then there was only one more step.

“Hold the car at 2,500 rpm for 7 minutes, this is easy,” I pointed out.  My friend revved the engine up and I walked around the vehicle.  After the 7 minutes, we assumed we had to top off the coolant.  Nope.  The coolant reservoir was still full.

The head gasket was fixed.  The technical service bulletin says that a head gasket replacement should take 26 hours.  It took 15 minutes instead.

I checked the codes.  Nothing.  There were no engine codes.  I bought a nearly flawless car for $500.  “Hey, do you have your stopwatch?” I asked.

“I got it,” he said.

“Start...now!”  The car lurched forward.  “40 miles per hour,” I said.  It didn’t even take 3 seconds.  “And here’s 60.”

“6.4 seconds.  About twice as fast as your Camry,” my friend said.  The frown was finally gone.