what I found in cylinder #3, long story but will try to make it short Options

[my wife hates my car]

Ok, so I bought Stella (my 1976 914) over a year ago , knowing it had a "rod knock". I think I was just scared to tear into it, cuz before this car i was pretty much a small block chevy guy. I finally got around to getting the engine out, then pretty much looked at it for a few days, once again, knowing I'm in over my head. After taking 80,000 pictures, labeling everything I could, I started to remove stuff. I got to the big tubes on the right side, pulled them off, & kinda glanced down at the valves to see if they were wet. (it blew a little smoke when I brought it home) It was almost a relief to see something I knew wasn't right. I pulled this clamp out of the head port, & smiled, thinking this was the "rod knock", but then realized the screw was missing. I will pull the head tomorrow, & hope the clamp was missing it's screw before someone dropped it down the intake.

My question to you 914 veterans..........Do I continue to go all the way with this (split the case, new bearings, etc) or just do the top end? I will probobly drive Stella once a month on weekends to an occasional car show.......do I need to go in deep? How long does the bottom end usually last in these things? Thanks, Hank