Surprisingly I managed to find a bit more time yesterday. Not much, but enough to get a bit more done. First, I flipped the mk2.5 head over and had a look at the gasket.

That’s cylinder 4 looking pretty wet there! The obvious failure with the head gasket matches up with the fluids seen on the block earlier.

Never matter… I decided to pay some attention to the Mk2 engine instead. Not a lot of space where it is, but as I’m only interested in removing the head from it I’m not convinced I need any more.

After removing the seat belts that must have been used to lift it out of the car, I set to work removing the inlet manifold. I’d not done this on a mk2 engine before, so rather than looking for the easiest way I just decided to split the inlet manifold and see what that showed. That wasn’t particularly difficult – just a few bolts, brackets at the throttle body. This then gave lots of space to remove the fuel rail, then the bottom half of the inlet manifold.

With that little lot out of the way, I decided to offer up the throttle bodies manifold. As with the Mk2.5 engine, this didn’t fit either.

It can’t be the studs that are bent then and must be the holes on the flange not being quite right. Lining it up with the gasket and it does appear the bottom holes may be ever so slightly out of alignment, but that may not be enough to matter. I’m going to dig out an 8mm drill bit, just in case the holes are misshapen slightly.