I've got a nicely-rusting Ph2 which I'm planning to steal the engine out of for my Ph2 cabriolet, but it looks like rust's started to take hold in quite unusual places...

I'm going to put the 6 through an MOT so I can condemn it with a clear conscience (or drive it for a while if by some miracle it passes), but the cam belt's got about 8cm play between the camshaft pulleys. I don't think letting an MOT inspector rev it's nuts off for the emissions test in that state would be terribly wise, so I'm trying to change the cambelt in-situ.

However, it looks like the rust's taken hold under the bonnet too - the captive nuts on the left hand engine mount cover had rusted solid and snapped off when I undid them, and now I can't unbolt the crankshaft pulley, no matter what I do!

I've tried the usual tricks of trying to crack it with the starter motor and undoing the bolt with a v long extension (a big tyre bar plus a 1.5m scaffolding pole!) and it hasn't budged at all. I figure that sort of sticking's likely to be caused by rust rather than thread lock, so I'm a bit at a loss what to do.

Should I:

a) Persevere with the starter motor / big bar route, and risk snapping the bolt off
b ) Apply some heat and risk wrecking the seals
c) try drilling into the bolt to see if that relieves some pressure, though that'll increase the chances of the bolt snapping and risk damaging the threads
d) Condemn the bottom end and try to rebuild it using my cab's xu10j4r block / crank, j4rs top end and maybe j4rs pistons if necessary
e) 'Get a little man in' to attack it with a big air impact wrench and then get very cross when he snaps the bolt off

I've taken a few crank bolts of that are covered in Loctite, not fun at all! I think I ended up taking the starter motor out then using the flywheel teeth and a long screwdriver / pry bar to stop the engine rotating. Only useful with 2 people though really!

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Rallye Race Car