For those who were doubtful as to whether the engine REALLY needed to be pulled, take a gander at what greeted me after unbolting the engine...

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The 15 year-old oil smelled like death.

The fuel in the tank was worse.

The muffler basically fell off the engine after the muffler straps were undone.

Did I mention how smelly this thing was???

Was it sitting near the ocean or IN the ocean?!

Next step was to carefully remove all the CIS injection pieces. The injectors were rusty and the injector insulators were crumbling. Everything was carefully bagged and labeled, but as we will learn later, plans would evolve and the CIS would get sold.

The exhaust including heat exchangers went in the trash as they were gross and had more mud wasp nests inside the tubing.

Lol - wait till we get to the Galvanic Corrosion part of the story!

So you may be wondering, why the Mickey Mouse reference?

Removing the fiberglass fan shroud reveals that answer.

Pulling the alternator I was greeted with an ancient burial ground.

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Cause of death electrocution or just plain getting stuck ?

Oh, this gonna be good!

Remember those 2 broken head studs??

Well someone had 11 more friends hiding!!

That's right, 13 broken head studs. Not sure of some broken from sitting, or all broke during operation.

We also ran into another snag during disassembly. Galvanic corrosion reared it's ugly head.

2 head studs were welded solid to the barrels. Not an exaggeration at all. I had to use a chisel and hammer to get the barrel off.

Good news was that other than broken studs, everything was looking pretty healthy with good cross hatching, no broken rings and the heads all in good condition except for corrosion and general nastiness. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1642901608.jpg
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This is going to be the greatest "While You're In There...!" series ever.
Thanks for sharing!

I love it.
It’s easy to be excited about how ugly this is because I know how good it gets.

That my friend is a massive understatement.

Mud daubers! Those things are known to have brought down complete passenger jets. Looks like it was sitting outside for a long time.

I was fortunate that the rod bearings and main bearings all looked pretty good. Other than some staining the crank was great.

I boxed up the cases, cam towers, flywheel, crank and rods to the machine shop to be gone through and readied for a rebuild. New ARP rod bolts, rod bushings and clevite bearings all went into the bottom end.

Since one cylinder was destroyed from chipping it off the stud, the only logical solution was a Mahle Motorsports 98mm 10.2:1 piston and cylinder set. Since these are meant for MFI or carbs, the CIS system was no longer needed and sold on the forums.

The heads were sent to local Porsche cylinder head specialist Lance Hayward. To "future proof" the build, we decided to twin plug the heads. You know, while we are in there...

As there was some corrosion on a few of the valves, we decided it made sense to replace all 6 intake and exhaust valves. For good measure, all valve springs were replaced too.

I also picked up a set of the Supertec head studs to hold it all together.

The stock cams were refurbished and reground to 964 specs before I had pulled the trigger on the piston set.

Under the tutelage of William Knight, we spec'd out some Web cams that would better suit the pistons. William also set me up with an aluminum Kennedy pressure plate, clutch and 46mm PMO carbs.

I also figured, in for a penny, in for a pound and picked up a gently used xdi ignition system from Jeff Gamroth, including a crank pulley.

In the words of Ron Burgundy...



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Jesus, I bought mine based on photos and explenation of the seller.
Shipped it from Verginia to Belgium and was hapilly surprised everything turned out as I thought.
I think this all could have been avoided by simply a few good pointed photos and an honest story of the seller....

Note to self: Don't drink and shop on Ebay.

I was in the hospital recovering from surgery on morphine and ended up on eBay- luckily I only ended up with a $3k set of racing wheels for my road bike.

I don't think the seller was necessarily DISHONEST as it was clear he didn't open up the valve covers etc.

The title was still in the name of the estate.

There were more surprises to be found, some good, some downright comical.

Quickly becoming my favorite thread of 2022. Love the mouse graveyard.

So with the motor out of the car, boxed up and sent to the machine shop, I disassembled the interior.

Dash was perfect, kneepad was perfect, rear seatbacks were good and seats were repairable.

Door panels, carpet and headliner all went in the trash.

Not much else happened over the winter as most of my time was occupied by finishing a gti project and dealing with the split up of my accounting firm and launching our new firm.

I would putter around doing some stuff in the early spring, but dove back in a bit deeper in May of 2020.

I removed all the glass and found that the front and rear seals were still in pretty good condition, but rear quarter seals were badly cracked and were the cause of the massive leaks.

It was obvious this car had more than one repaint.

Something in particular caught my eye on the drivers side door jamb.

A small crack in the paint right on the edge between the door and rear quarter.

I can't seem to locate the before pictures, but what I found was a layer of bondo that covered some very shiny metal. Interesting!

That shiny metal turned out to be aluminum foil tape.

The first bit of rust has been found!


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And he has a little brother too!

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