Good topic.
I'm building a 5.7 for my daily '73 Dart at the moment.

The motor I bought for this project turned out to have a badly worn no.8 journal.
The rodbearing on no.6 was also spinning already.

What I noticed was that the pistons didn't move freely on the rods. Especially on no.8, which was pretty tight.
I wonder if other engines has this problem aswell, and maybe some of the failure-rates can be also 'blamed' on the piston-pins getting stuck in the pistons due to lack of (general) oiling?
The heads looked dirty and black-ish on top aswell. Probably lack of oil, or/and engine operatingtemps too high?