Time to tick off a few more maintenace items on the list, mainly around oil leaks. But firstly, whilst jacking up the car so I wasn't bending over as much, I noticed the passenger castor rod nut where it meets the traction bar had completely backed itself off. This would have been from the previous track day..

So here is where I've noticed a few oil leaks, looks to come from the vtec solenoid and distributor. I do have a feeling the headgasket on this corner is leaking, I'm really hoping it isn't but yeah..

~ 28/11/2021

Vtec solenoid off, a little dirty inside. Don't think I've ever pulled this apart since putting the motor in the car 5-6yrs ago after rebuild.. Cleaned it out with degreaser, then ran the air gun through it to remove any residue/dust from the cleaning process. New gaskets and back on she goes!

Now this is where things get interesting.. Went to take the distributor off to replace the internal + external o rings and erm.. I have no idea how this happened, asked a few experienced Honda friends and they've never seen this..

And after further investigation you can see the main prong along with some smaller chunks of metal just chilling there. Luckily to the left of the cam end there, its an enclosed section in the cylinder head where a bolt lives, so everything just sat in the head of that bolt. It took a while to remove the chunks of metal, also as I was being very careful not to drop anything into the motor. Went and bought the tiniest magnetic stick I could get from bunnings, to end up using a random flat head which worked perfectly

Got all the metal out in the end, woo! What a time consuming task that was. gg to my back.. You can see on the left a dent in the cylinder head/rocker cover which I'm guessing was caused by the distributor prong which had fallen off.. Luckily this doesn't seem to cause any further damage.. phew. Money signs kept popping into mind during this entire ordeal.

Got the interal and external o rings replaced. I was somewhat rushing last minute so forgot to take pics replacing the internal o ring. Whilst I had the distributor pulled apart I cleaned out everything inside as well. I got a spare prong bit for the distrubtor to replace the one missing a prong and back on it went!

The last bit was some new spark plugs. I pulled one prior and decided probably best to change them, had been a while and I was already doing everyt1hing else. I might invest in a spark plug sand blaster in the future to always keep them in tip top shape.

Also took some pics of the top of the pistons, some are looking a little dirty. Might need to look into doing a upper engine cleaner. Pictures are from distrubtor > timing belt

Late night pic during the process, also painting some wiper assemblies for the EF9