Hi, first post so please be kind if the questions are dumb. We live in Portugal now, out in the sticks where the roads are awful, so we bought a second-hand Sportrak (RHD) a couple of years ago. On a long drive recently it blew the head gasket, a mechanic friend rebuilt it and it now runs OK...IF you can get it to start, but that's VERY difficult, sometimes impossible. Sportraks aren't common in Portugal and our friend doesn't have any compatible test kit to connect to trace the fault. We already tried a new temperature sensor, no joy. Have just bought a pdf of the workshop manual from this site and hope that may help him, but is there a diagnostic code reader he also needs? There's one on ebay from a couple of Chinese sellers eg here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Portable-3-LCD-Display-AC619-OBDII-OBD2-Car-Diagnostic-Scanner-Tester-Kit-ELM327-/162209741740?hash=item25c4743bac:g:JMwAAOSwTA9X4PGV - but one listing claims it's compatible and the other one says not...don't want to shell out money and waste more weeks for it to arrive only to find it's useless.

One idea, does the computer store a history of fault? If so, if we remove the computer, is there anyone with the appropriate kit in the UK I can bring it to? We're next due in the UK in 3 or 4 weeks time and I could bring it over.

Thanks in advance for any advice, John