So my roommate (who I'll call has this old Fender amp that he doesn't really care too much for, and his friend R has a '76 2002 that has been sitting in their mutual friend G's driveway for about a year and a half with a blown head gasket. G bought this car about ten years ago from some good 'ol boy, who had it sitting in his front yard slowly rotting away. It didn't run too good but G got her all fixed up, and eventually sold her to his friend J. J started tearing her apart with the aim of restoring her, more or less, but lost interest in the project and sold her to R. R also wanted to fix her up but then the head gasket blew. R isn't the most mechanical person in the world- so he drove her, blowing steam, over to G's house thinking he would enlist G to get her fixed. He even went so far as to buy the gasket kit. But time went by and she sat, forlorn, in G's driveway.
So anyway my roommate, B, canny dealer that he is, talked R into trading the BMW for the amp. More or less a fair trade, between friends. B even traded G his old Honda Cub in exchange for G's help replacing the head gasket (B isn't the most mechanical guy, either). But the deal got soured; this story is long enough as it is so I'll spare you the details. Anyway B was still willing to pay cash for the BMW and R was willing to sell but in the meantime B had the opportunity to buy a Royal Enfield for a really great price, and so he did. So B says to me, "you should buy the BMW, after all you're actually capable of fixing it", and it just so happened that I had come into some cash right about that time, and to be honest I was pretty jealous of B trying to buy this car, so I went for it.
Still with me? So now I own a 2002 that's been sitting in G's driveway for a year and a half. I gather up my tools and head over there to pull the head off and replace the gasket. G was kind enough to help me; I'm new to BMW's and G knows this car as well as anyone so he was a real asset. I don't know if I would have found that bolt underneath the intake manifold. We got the head off and cleaned up and discovered that there was quite a bit of rust in the first cylinder. We scraped it out best we could but it's pretty rough in there. And also the reason coolant was blowing in there was because a small chunk of the head had mysteriously vanished; it looks like there may have been a bubble in the casting in the area between the head of the first cylinder and the coolant channels, and the small amount of metal disguising it (and keeping the head intact) finally gave way. Anyway G was anxious to get the car out of his driveway (finally) and I was anxious to get it into mine, where it will be much easier to work on. Also I really wanted the engine to turn over, just so I don't feel like a fool for buying this thing. So we patched the hole with JB weld, cleaned it up best we could, and put 'er back together. And by gum if she didn't start up that night, after a bit of gentle coaxing. She runs pretty well, too, rusty cylinder and all.
I got her over to my place but as you might imagine the JB Weld didn't hold. Thanks to these here forums I've got a replacement head on the way- nothing fancy but I'll clean it up and slap it on and hopefully she'll run OK. She needs at least one new tire, and the brakes could use a going-over, and probably some suspension work, and most definitely some body work (it's nice to watch the road go by through the floorboards but it's not so much fun in the rain). Everybody wants to knwo what color I'm going to paint her but my first goal is to get her running reliably. But the answer is blue.