Saving Old Seagulls

Good Morning. Thankyou for all the useful infomation on these pages and forum posts its invaluable.
My son has just bought an old 40+ on holiday in the UK and besotted with it. But I am getting increasingly worried about the international flight home to South Africa.
We have stripped the motor down as far as possible, cleaned and soaked every component so there is not a whiff of petrol and were planning to vacuum pack and split the pieces between a few passenger bags.
But I think an obstructive security person could confiscate just like that if they wanted?

Is there any experience or advice please? I can't face my son if it is taken...

At this point in time he doesn't have an outboard motor, only several packages containing outboard motor parts, fairly innocuous as long as the airline security can't smell petrol!
He could always email the Airline security & ask them, that way you'd get an answer in writing.
I have taken my race outboard to New Zealand & Bermuda several times for races & only had a problem once in LA on my way back from Auckland.

I've no experience with S A Customs, so no idea of their duty requirements.

If your in the UK & he wants to discuss, send me a Private Message & I'll send my phone number.

Charles

Thanks for the response. Belated feedback that maybe useful to others in future.
We had our Seagull disassembled, biggest piece being gearbox and driveshaft still intact. All fluids out and cleaned.

And pieces spread amongst family members' checked in luggage and no-one blinked an eye as far as we could tell Heathrow/ Franfurt/ Cape Town with Lufthansa.