

After buying the socket, 20 minutes later (including the drive to my garage) I had these in my hands:

Notice the oily bolts - a clear sign of some oil leaks:

However after removing the heads I got two huge surprizes. first one was this:

After closer inspection it looked like grain! Only in a farmers car can this be found...

Surprize number 2 unfortunatelly slipped out of my fingers into my dirty oil and antifreeze collection pan - the main reason for the outward oil leak - someone did replace the head gasket at some point in the cars life, and when he did, he shaved off any contaminants off the block with a cutting blade of a razor blade. What he did by his clumziness was to leave a small piece of it on the block and then installing all the gaskets. If you look closer at cylinder number 1 and 2, in between them, you'll notice a huge oil leak. This is where the blade chip was...
Anyway, after removing the heads, I noticed that there's a lot room to work un der the bonnet. And I mean A LOT. Italian cars usually don't have that much access to all components

Air con compressor out:


Air filter assembly out:


All the filter box brackets are also gone:

As was the intercooler:


and the main cooling pipe at the back of the engine:

The fule filter bracket was also removed:

Then the air con radiator:

Then the top radiator bracket:

And soon the radiator itself:

And last job for that day - the radiator bottom pipe:

Now I'm looking forward for thursday, when it will be a Bank holliday here and I can work a bit more on the car. I'm planing to remove the alternator, starter, lower radiator bracket, the water pump and if I'm really lucky - the damned cranckshaft pulley...