I didn’t manage to find any time over Christmas, but have managed a couple of hours today. I set myself a target of removing the head from the mk2.5 engine (which I only want the block from) and got going. For this, I’d need to get around the front of the engine. Unfortunately, I’m at a ‘space critical’ time in the garage where I’ve filled it full of so much stuff it’s like one of those picture puzzles trying to work in the area you want. Think I need to invest in more sheddage to get the garden stuff out! Anyway, a quick game of tetris later and I had the space I needed.

I carried on methodically removing the pipes, brackets and covers until I had the access I needed. This time round, I’m putting all the bolts in sandwich bags and labelling what they’re for. I wish I’d done that with the previous engine instead of putting them in a container thinking it’ll be easy to work out what is for what!

As per last time, I got stuck with the crank pulley. The 10mm bolts were easy enough to remove, but the pulley was staying put. The crank nut itself has also not managed to magically free itself. The air impact gun I’ve robbed from my brother doesn’t seem to be man enough to do the job anymore. I’m not convinced it’s the gun itself, more that there is too much hose between it and the compressor and perhaps the mini oiler is leaking. I’m going to get a new short hose and set it up like it was when it easily removed the last crank nut.

Still, that was a job for another day so for now I just removed the cam belt tensioner and pulled the belt off that way. Removing the head from there was a standard affair with the only oddity being that one of the head bolts had two washers instead of one. I can’t remember is this was the same for the old engine or not. Will check when I remove the head from the mk2 engine.

Whilst removing the spark plugs I noticed that the one of cylinder 4 was wet with oil. This seemed a bit odd as it’s usually the valve cover leaking that does that. However, the spark plug hole was completely dry. I therefore expected to see that the head gasket was broken and lo and behold…

Closer inspection…

Shame really, as I bought the engine as a working engine not one with a blown head gasket. That’s far too far down the road to care about or bother with now though. All it means is I’ll have to check the block for trueness just in case it has overheated. Worst case – I’ll remove the crank like I was originally going to do and get the block decked. Cross that bridge when I get to it.

I’ve provisionally got Thursday off work so I’ll try and make more progress then. Maybe a tip run to try and get some more space to work around!