Ok now, what? First official action I had to take was to register the thing here in Germany. Whit a large part of the formalities resolved the TÜV decided that it was not going to be registered with an exhaust that was lacking a mid-muffler (???). So I found myself a EEC certified replacement exhaust on ebay, had it shipped and installed. Afterwards the car was on the road (even though only semi-legally as German cities mostly do not allow cars w/o a cat to drive around) with relatively little additional effort. Very nice! After driving her around very carefully (I am not the person who beats the shite out of his cars - my Escos has never seen 6.000+ rpm in 6 years) I noticed that the whole thing got pretty hot after just a few kilometres. Also the fans stayed on for c. 2 mins after turning off the engine when I just did some 30kms at moderate speeds over the Autobahn. Suspecting something wrong with the ratiator or coolant fluid I drove the car to my workshop of trust...guess what? Exactly! Head gasket! This is where the fun really started! With not many options at hand I took the hit and had a new head gasket installed: