Ok, its been 2 months and alot has happened. I went to Suriname for almost 4 weeks at the end of January and Blair didn't work on his car due to a onsite job injury.
The good news is that I pulled the 2.0L engine out the other day and the hellhole looks pretty good. I cut out the BS DPO battery tray and started scraping the undercoating off. Blair will tackle alot of that work now himself. We started painting alot of the FI bits and he is going to order the final parts for final assemby.
I torn apart part of the 2.0l and did a bit of checking and my feeling is that #1 intake valve has a dropped seat. The motor turns until TDC and the exhaust valve looks ok from the exhaust port. Still have to pop a valve cover or Blair will tear the top end down to verify the condition of the engine. Hopefully, the bottom end is good as the heads are pretty messed up from a bad mechanical shop installing new SSI HE's and the new flywheel, clutch and PP. These brand new parts along with the new unused starter made the purchase of the car a decent deal as thats a $1000 in new parts alone.
The brakes are completely rebuilt and the tranny is a recent install, hopefully its in good condition. Maybe we'll pull it apart to see its condition.


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