No. Those excuses were poor at best... all of them. He should have been more than happy to follow up on his work. I would have wanted to see the fallout from the bearing spinning for sure. Spun bearings can cause some damage. The extent of what occured could have scored the crank. It irks me to think he didn't stand behind his work and tried to shirk it off on you... and then follows up with going back on his word and not being forthcoming with the damaged part. Especially damning is that his inclination to correct the problem was to simply replace the indivdual crank bearing without removing the crank?? I hate hearing about outfits and people like that.

At 8 degrees timing and what sounds to be a stock dist, there would be no problem whatsoever with any pre-ignition. If there were any, which I doubt, it would not have had any impact on your engine. In fact, until I read this thread, I had not heard that theory before. If it was bad enough you would have heard it and shut it down anyway. I doubt the 23 miles you put on it was very harsh.