Fast 68, definitely wanted to do a leak down anyway because of the pretty big inconsistencies I am seeing in the plugs. I'll give that a shot.

Motor is brand new, didn't see anything unusual as far as metal in the last oil change but I never cut the filter open.

Mad scientist, they are stamped keen engineering but also have a mopar performance stamp on them. I am guessing it was a company that made rockers for mopar performance? They are blue anodized needle bearing rockers.

I'll check the pushrod ends at the rocker but I didn't notice anything unusual when I checked the lash. The pushrod angles are pretty bad and I was planning on purchasing a shim kit for better geometry but the way it is now was run on another LA motor and never had any issues running 9's, so I figured it would be OK for a while just till I sort other bugs out.

Justin, what do you mean by oriented right?

Ps as far as the stalling/running crappy thing, don't put too much weight in that being pushrod related because this fitech has been nothing but trouble with e85...i wouldn't put that past being just fitech related but it just seemed coincidental that the "tuning"'problems seem to get worse and then i noticed the noise.