Well Dick, as you might remember, I acquired this engine and T9 box in December 2014, packaged in a roadworthy 85 Scorpio with about 120.000 miles on it, which is far too little for a 29 year old car.
Probably it was first owned by a German pensioner, and after that imported to The Netherlands, and it might have been standing for a long time before I bought it.
I ran it for about 500 miles to see how it went, took it over 100 mph in that time, then dismantled the Scorpio, and plonked the lot in Donkey without opening anything up.
It has been serving me faithfully to this day, so “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to be true in this case.
What you see is as new to you as it was to me the day before when I took the head off.
Different burn pattern; might the flash light of taking the picture make it look that way, I hadn’t noticed? Look at the spark plugs in the right order, nothing strange there I think?
The coolant that I renewed in 2015 is completely rust brown, so will be changed again now, I think that also points to the engine having been standing unused for long times before 2015.
Today I only had time to change the rubber mounted center piece of my adapted Scorpio trans mount, which is holding up nicely. The rubber was almost eaten away (after 32 years), see through in some places, so I got a new one from Burton’s.