It is not under the best of circumstances that I write this post. In 2007 I had Ray Barton build me a 528 for my ‘Cuda. To date it has 611 miles on it and no racing. I have changed the oil each year at about 200 mile increments. Recently it appears that I have a case of bearing failure.

About the engine:
It is the usual Ray Barton recipe of 528 cubes on a Mopar brand cast iron block, solid flat tappet cam (280*, 667”), Nascar lifters, Ray Barton rocker arms, aluminum heads, dual quad single plane, etc. It dyno’ed at 702 HP at near 7K RPM. I have it rev limited at 7K RPM as well.

Here are my issues:
Suddenly I lost oil pressure. It would always run about 60 Lbs. and now it is more like 20 Lbs. At about the same time it lost a couple hundred RPM off it’s idle. When I drained the oil it was black and looked like it had way more than 200 miles on it. Former oil changes where clean. There were some fine metal particles on the magnetic oil plug. When I cut the filter open I found a lot of gold colored metal in the pleats. This weekend I will be pulling the pan and bearing caps to see what might have failed.

Does anyone have any suggestions what I should look for besides the obvious bearing damage? Does anyone have any ideas what might have happened and why this failure took place? Does anyone else have experience with Ray Barton engines and their quirks?