Update 15 Jul 2026

So I weighed my options and decided to pop the port side bypass covers to get a look at what was happening in there. I was shocked at how good the gaskets were. I’ll get new ones because they are cheap, but these were in great shape.

I think I have good news in that when I look down into the guts, there’s no rust. The rod / crank area all look like normal good metal . I tried to take photos, but it wasn’t easy.

I was able to get the seafoam deep creep in a lot of good / new places.

I will share some pics with the caveat that when I tried to take a picture below the pistons, my flash makes the paint look a lot like orange rust, so I took another photo with natural lighting, and you can see it’s the paint.

So now, I continue the waiting game, with some new access panels to get the penetrating fluid in.