So, just before lockdown, I found a little more sludge on the coolant cap. Out came the borescope…
1 and 4 looked fine… 
But 2 and 3 were wet
Funnily enough a compression test turned out fine – in fact 2 and 3 had slightly more compression. I guess the water was helping the rings to seal.
Anyway, since I couldn’t go anywhere anyway, why not turn it into a much bigger project! So, engine out:
Doing my first full engine out on my own was a bit scary, but it came out fine with the only casualty being one of the oil cooler line unions to the oil filter block which sheared instead of unscrewing. That’s a problem for later. I’m not decided how far I’ll go on the engine rebuild yet, at the very least I’ll replace all seals and gaskets plus sort the inevitably broken exhaust studs
The plan is to strip the bay, sorting any rust (so far 95% of it is just surface so that’ll be treated with a wire wheel and Deox gel, though there’s a couple of tiny patches needed), cleaning and repainting the wishbones and replacing all bushes plus the steering rack will be swapped for a hopefully less leaky spare.
Yuck 
After wirewheeling
The upper wishbones were a real pain to remove because most of the bolts sheared thanks to galvanic corrosion between the bolts and the aluminium mountings. Luckily they all sheared at the head leaving some stud that I could unwind from the captive nuts at the car.
Next step, welding!