I have yet to hear from anyone that has logged more miles on their original gas engine.
Yesterday I rolled over 395,000 miles.
Each cold start brings a MIL. That is Dodge/Mopar speak for Malfunction Indicator Light.
Everyone else calls it a Check Engine light but I try to follow what the Dodge owners manual dictates.
The MIL is always a random misfire or a cylinder 6 misfire. Once the engine is running a couple of minutes, the idle smooths out and it idles great. You'd never know that the engine has this many miles on it. It does blow a little steam if it has been ran, shut down and restarted a bit later. I suspect the head gaskets are leaking a minute amount of coolant into the chambers. I smell the sweet tang of coolant from the exhaust pipes even if it isn't pushing any steam.
Power seems on par with what it has been for years but it may have incrementally slowed down a bit. I'm tempted to run it on a dyno before I pull it for the swap, just to have a before and after comparison.
The machinist has had the replacement engine for almost 3 weeks. I don't know if he has done anything yet. I'm going to check in with him tomorrow. I don't like to be a pain in the ass to people but I also don't want this to drag out 3 months. I want to have the engine here before THIS one craps out.