This is the engine of this Hyundai, with the cylinder head removed. And you can immediately see one of the problems.

If you look in the foreground of the photo you’ll notice that one of the waterways is blocked. And diagonally opposite in the bore of the cylinder is a little trail of rust. Water coming along the waterway is hitting the blockage and being forced out under pressure, right into the bore of number two cylinder.

My suspicion is that we are going to find that the head will be slightly warped. I hope that the new gasket will take that up.

But there’s another major problem with this engine.

Look carefully at the crown of the piston in the foreground. Can you see how damaged it is? That’s either major impact damage or else it’s a severe heat seizure, and seeing as how there is play in the bore, I suspect the latter.

Apart from the play though, the bore isn’t too bad. It’s not scored or marked.

However, this engine is ruined. It’s not going to last long and with us having disturbed it, it’s probably not going to last even that long.

So what we are going to do is to replace the cylinder head gasket and patch it up with other previously-used components and then just drive it until it stops. 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles, who knows? But it won’t be doing much. And there’s no sense in throwing good money after bad

This is an object lesson for anyone – don’t buy vehicles off Ebay. This is about the seventh or eighth that I’ve encountered that has turned out to be a pile of scrap – a bodged repair job after major damage and quickly moved on.

There aren’t half some dishonest people out there.

So after an early night, I was up quite early having had yet another really good night’s sleep. And I cracked on with revising this blog that I’m trying to update relating to my voyage around Canada.

I must have written about 5000 words I suppose, one entry being nearly 1500 words. Clearly I don’t have anything better to do.

And later this evening, I replaced the door furniture on the shower room door where I’d varnished it.

But what a waste of time that this is turning out to be. This Hyundai has really p155ed me off, what with everything that has happened and what I’ve discovered today.