I’ve recently acquire an 86 300E with a 5 speed tranny, the car was driven into a utility pole guy wire, damaging the hood and passenger fender, bending the upper radiator support, pushing the radiator into the fan. The car was driven about 5 miles home, it overheated the engine did not stop running and did not seize and the head gasket has failed. The engine did not seize and it still turns over. I’m going to replace the engine with a 603 or a 602 T from my stash. I suspect the bottom end of this engine is still good. The head might be but it might be warped or cracked I don’t know.

I assume that as it was a factory manual tranny setup the crank is bored for a pilot bearing, I don’t know if all 103’s had that feature. This might be a starting block to build or rebuild a 103 engine for a manual tranny application. If someone is interested in this engine and wants to come to Cape Cod to get it, please PM me. I’ll be pulling it from the chassis in the next couple weeks.