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No, it's not. Research shows a 50% molecular degradation after 100,000 miles in radiator plastics. Replace or leave it be, but I wouldn't try "building it up" or repairing it. What you saw is very common, the outlets do this all the time. I've never worked at a shop and still seen it a bunch of times.

^ This is the most important step in setting up the cam belts on the EA82. Skip it and your engine will only ever run on one bank “properly”, the other is just dead weight and the engine will be a gutless wonder that’s painful to start. Personally I’d just do the HGs and focus on getting that correct. Shave the heads to get the flat again, be meticulous in your mating surfaces cleaning. GD would probably recommend pulling the pistons and putting fresh rings in there (his first recommendation would be to move on to a later model platform as this one is dead by lack of available spares). I would no be splitting the block just because you pulled the engine out. It’s not a “might as well” job and it will rack up the money and effort required to get it back together and operational. Cheers Bennie

Don't worry about it until you are ready to put it back together. There are many threads on here, and videos on YouTube. The timing mark on the flywheel is the middle l of 3 lll, not the 0 degrees mark. Install one cam belt, with its pulley mark at the top, straight up, there is a notch in the back cover. Then rotate the crank one full revolution, and install the second belt the same way. This puts the cams in a position where the valve springs are not trying to turn the cams. After this, I run it for 5 seconds, then reset the tension. This gives the belts time to walk into where they are going to run. The engine is non interference, so if you get it wrong, it won't destroy itself, it just won't run well. Before you go deeper, be sure there is a reason. If the engine has been reasonably cared for, oil changes, not severely overheated, etc. 200k miles is not a big deal.

Replace the radiator. It's garbage. Welcome to modern cars. Radiators last 8-10 years max. GD

One good thing about products with the LL Bean label is they are like Craftsman tools, guaranteed for life! So if it ever fails to give customer satisfaction, you can call their toll free 800 number and will find out how to get a full refund!

Got it. Failed timing components can't introduce visible, demonstrable amounts of metal into the oil. Metallic sauce in the oil is usually caused by oil starvation to the affected parts.

Absolutely, it was a great idea to post here. I've been all around these engines for decades, so my questions and comments are aiming for clarity to help you.

Nope. I wouldn't do it unless you're ready for an engine swap. H6's swap exactly like H4's if you've ever done a subaru. Cooling system anomalies like you're describing are classic H6 headgasket sypmptoms. They can also be intermittent, so I wouldn't trust one week of it running with no symptoms/coolant loss. It ran hot or smelled funny...someone topped the coolant level off...and thought it was "fixed"...it prompted them to sell when they're getting a whiff of looming potential issues/costs...but still think it's "fixed" because they topped it off or someone (a shop/friend) told them it was. But it's not. Proceed cautiously

Thanks Paul, I appreciate the sentiments. This won't be an easy project, but I've come this far already. I'll bug you more for parts come spring, hope you're staying warm out east! I got excited over the weekend when I found this thread: It's super old, and unverified, but I happen to have an early EA71 sitting at the shop, so I started pulling it apart to see what I could manage. I have some conclusions, none are to my benefit however. Remember, I can't find 76mm pistons for the EA61, otherwise I wouldn't even look in to these other options. This is my test fit of the EA61 head onto the EA71 block. Some of the head studs line up, but not all of them, and not close enough to jam it together either. These are the two heads next to each other. The machined one is the EA61. The EA71 head gasket is above it. Close, but not close enough. Here's the EA71 head gasket on top of the EA61 head. Again, very similar, but you can see that the lower studs don't line up at all, they seem to have been moved for clearance for the much larger bore. Alright, so the heads clearly won't swap. What about the bell housing? So, this was interesting. Both are top mount starters, as you can see. The EA61 housing does line up with the EA71 bolt holes, all of them actually. The issues are as follows: the bump out in the case doesn't line up, and leaves a gap on both sides that I can't get around, major machine work would be necessary. Also, the main seal would have to be some weird hybrid, EA61 is smaller outer diameter, EA71 has a larger inner diameter. Also, the oil pan bolts don't line up. Ok, so that means that I can't put the heads from the EA61 onto the EA71, and I can't swap the EA61 bell housing onto the EA71. In that forum post that I reference above, it says that even though the bell housings are different, I could theoretically swap an EA71 into an EA61 car. Keep in mind that I can't change the transmission, the FF-1 has inboard brakes, so it has to use the factory trans. Since I had it all apart anyway, I brought the EA71 bell housing over to the FF-1 itself to physically see what would happen. This first picture shows the dowel pin location, the EA71 has it much lower than the EA61 (the hole it's supposed to line up with is about an inch higher, you can see it in the picture. This picture shows the relation of the lower mounting studs. They are wider and lower than the EA61 studs. The upper bolts actually line up in this arrangement, but there's no way this will work. So there, through trail and (mostly) error, I've discovered that there is NO way to put an EA71 into an EA61 car. Hopefully, if anyone else ever wants to try this, they search the internet and find this post. Oh, and to ad insult to injury, here's my smashed rear window, I must have hit it with a rock when I was messing with my new snow blower yesterday. Hurray, I'm sure a rear window will be easy to find... I'm no where near giving up, for the record. I just want to document this process for future reference. Custom pistons are very expensive, I'm still searching for the elusive singe NOS one.

need to clarify that pre-1996 is the only guarantee of non-interference. There are no shortcuts to good maintenance. Do it right, every time, and dont cheap out on parts. Cheap parts will do you no favors.