I finally had time to disassemble the head-intake-exhaust manifold-turbo assembly last night after having it on the bench for a few days. Everything came apart without much fuss, though I couldn’t imagine doing any of it with the whole assembly still on the car. It was definitely easier to pull the head with everything still attached.

The good: The turbo assembly seems to be in good shape. There is a fairly large amount of radial play in the compressor-turbine shaft, but no noticeable axial play, and no oil in the compressor housing. I also didn’t see any cracks or damage of any sort on the whole assembly. So, it should be fine with a rebuild.

The bad: There’s more cracks in the head. There’s cracks in the small water passages and more alarmingly, cracks leading from one of the valves to the outside of the combustion chamber, on all cylinders. See below:

Also, the intake manifold has been sloppily ported between the mating halves. Luckily, the rest of the intake manifold has not been ported, nor has anything else. Also note the lovely homemade gasket. I should be able to smooth these out:

So, the long and short of it is that I’m looking at replacing the head now as well as having the turbo rebuilt. I kind of had a feeling this was going to happen. Stay tuned, things should start to get interesting from here on out!