Yeah, you can definitely do the work with the bottom half in but after seeing how hard a hit my engine took to bend all the valves I thought it was better to take a close look at the rods and bearings. Also wanted to make sure any debris that may have fallen into the pan wasn't also in the oil pump, etc. So I took the opportunity to clean everything back to nearly new condition before reassembly. I really only wanted to do this once.
I've put about a 100 miles on the rebuild so far but everything seems real good (fingers crossed). I really like the engineering in this car.... a bit more advanced than the '68 Beetle I had in high school.
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