There was a brief ray of hope yesterday as I recieved a call in the morning from the speedshop in Houston. The guy called me to tell me that the engine had come in and that I could come to Houston this weekend to pick it up. Very exciting stuff, and so I quickly talked to Wei and Scott, as well as made a reservation for a pickup truck with Enterprise.

The guy is a cool guy so he called back and asked for my email address so that he could send me pictures of the engine. At first I thought that pictures would be unnecessary because I was gonna buy the engine no matter what. However, when I got them, I realized just how thankful I was that he sent the pictures. In Scott's words, it looked like someone vomited all over it. See for yourself:

Not only is there rust, but there's oil everywhere. Rust is less of a problem, but oil everywhere probably means that there is a leak somewhere. The last picture shows the turbo bell housing with a nice oil stain right at the seal. At minimum it means that a seal got busted. At worst, it means that the turbo is busted.

The third picture was probably the one that did it in for me. The rope they used to lift the engine out of the car was tied onto the fuel rail which bent the fuel rail and because of that, the #3 injector doesn't fit in snugly anymore. So yeah, it wasn't too hard of a decision to pass on this. We will probably go to Dallas to this other importer to find an engine. The search continues.