I got the engine cleaned, bored, balanced to the 1.8 flywheel, wined and dined for $590. Now I just have to take out the old leaky engine and install the new one. Already ran into a problem, the threaded hole where the oil feed for the turbo kit for some reason will not accept the Earl's fitting bolt (outlined in the archived section). Upon inspection it's not the prettiest thread so I'll have to run a chase in there. Aside from that the only other problem I'm running into is the fact that I'm a giant puss and my back starts aching after working for about 30 minutes. I anticipate this install taking me a few weeks because I'm also pretty lazy. I'll take pictures tomorrow and update the thread as I go.

Right now I'm also shopping a gasket kit, I'll be reusing my Cometic stainless head gasket, it only has about 1,500 miles on it and none of those miles are track time. I'm also going to get the chromoly oil pump gears. Anyone have any other suggestions while (when) I have the engine bay empty and the engine itself naked? Also, I have 2 clean, unwarped heads. I was thinking about possibly getting one of them worked as well or doing a DIY job.

 

While you have the engine bay empty.. clean the **** out of everything. A few bottle of simple green and brushes of various sizes work wonders. If you're really feeling froggy, I highly recommend some seam welding.