backstory on this motor, this is an earlier mopar performance block, (pre world product i believe?) it has a full water jacket, not siamese bores......

anyway, here was the deal: the block did in fact have a casting issue, and was leaking out of the main oil circuit. it did not rear itself as a problem until the engine was good and hot. eddie haines had the machine shop bore the passage to 3/8"s, then tolerance fit a thin wall tube that was loctited in. he then epoxied over the repair on the outside, for insurance. that took care of the oil leak......

the blowby issue: the diamond pistons were .0005 under tolerance in the ring gap, they were supposed to have .0015 clearance, and only had .001. is his words, some of the rings seized up in there because of this. he did not notice it on fire up at his place, i didn't notice it until it had run for awhile. so, diamond says they are within their spec, but the total seal rings did not like it. a new set of pistons would have taken 8 weeks, and they said they might be just the same dimension wise. so, a new set of rings were sized a half a thousandth off of the thickness, and used.....

this all took place without any discussing of the matter with me or my partner. the work had been done, and the engine put back together. i told him how i was not comfortable with this, as we were already in it deep enough with the first set of problems, and doing this again coast to coast was not an option, not after this much money has been spent. so, against my gut, i decided it would be ok if the engine were dynoed, cooled down, dynoed again, video'd, pics, etc, to verify everything was coming up good.....

the engine was broken in on the dyno, no blowby, and made 576hp and 543lbs. ft. of torque, at 5800rpm. he said the lifters begin to pump up after that in his past experience, so he didn't take it higher. he thinks there is still another 15hp or so there. there were pics, and vid, and everything looks to be good. it was not heat cycled like i asked for whatever reasons.......

so, engine back from florida, installed, timed, and ready to go. lets try this one more time...

stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of the drippy hemi saga......