Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

Cleaned the severe pipe corrosions to this level.
Before/After photos.

I didn’t want to go too far polishing them as some of the area were very deep that I may end up being forced to replace the entire water passage.









However, for this thermostat cover, I may consider replacing it.

It can be re-used but at the next TB/WP service, best replacing it with a new one because I think there was manufacturing issue with it.
Although the majority of the damages were caused by the heavy corrosion, I could see imperfection inside the internal wall of the pipe.
I couldn't take good photo but if I use my finger to feel the internal wall of the pipe, I can feel some sort of protrude, possibly the sand trapped inside the metal.

At the external wall, there were several suspicious tiny holes that could be caused by the trapped sand and only emerged due to rust chewing into the metal.

I placed the parts order to Japan and found out that there is only 1 x thermostat cover left within the entire Honda Japan parts stock...
If it arrives in time while working on other areas, I will replace it but otherwise, I'll just re-use the existing one and ask the owner to replace it at the next opportunity.



Another potential delay waiting for the parts delivery…. Beauty of working on the classic cars….





Before installing the big coolant hoses under the header tank, I wanted to keep some space accessing the front eng mount bolt so decided to deal with the side eng mount and the severe oil leakage from the valve cover area.





After what I saw on other areas, no surprise finding even more bolts only finger tightened or even missing several bolts….
This ACG bracket bolt was not even finger tight…




Missing the TB front cover bolt that was hidden by the ACG.
Another one bit lower near the oil level gauge pipe is also missing.....