75 914/4 2.0l
The story is that the car sat under wraps for years - as a complete unit. Motor was dropped, cleaned up and had new seals installed. When I got the motor it looked like this:
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Well, by chance I found out that one of the valve guides was loose. So I had to have the heads rebuilt.
At that point I was beginning to have concerns about the rest of the motor, regardless of how she "appeared" on the outside, I was worried about other issues that may be hidden under all that makeup. So, I'm having the motor rebuilt.
The shop called me today and invited me over to see what they found (see pictures below). They said that somehow water managed to get into the motor and sat at the low points of the bearing oil channels, causing what you see below.
How long do you think this motor would have run without being rebuilt?
Aside from the rust here, cam bushings were also showing signs of rust along with some other internals. The pictures are of the worst of it.
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Moral of the story, you really can't judge a book by its cover. I'm just glad and lucky that I found that valve guide floating in the exhaust port.