These engines are notorious for sucking oil through the intake gasket. I have personally fought this issue on an engine. They can consume a substantial amount of oil that way and since that oil contains no octane, it can make the engine much more prone to spark knock. BEFORE you tear your engine down, check those intake ports for oil and the back sides of the intake valves for deposits. Just in case. All it takes is one or two cylinders sucking oil to cause those issues.
the other area is through the spark plug/tubes. Several companies made a press in Aluminum socket that uses an o-ring to seal against the out side on the spark plug tube. I believe milodon , barton, mancini and possibly a few others offer them. the current ones will not work on aluminum heads without modification.
My thought for best bang for buck and prevention of bigger issues all the sudden, would be a basic tear down for rings and bearings, plus check valve job. Check cam lobes. True everything up as necessary, that kinda deal. Hopefully you dont need pistons, but if you do, you were screwed long term anyway. I wouldn’t stroke it or do any porting etc.
If I pull it down , it will get pistons no question simply for the compression it has. So, getting away that cheap aint gonna happen. Thus my original question " Stroke it or not " . And deep down I just dont feel that need.
And I plan to pull valve covers to do the valves in the spring. And plan is to install the milodon tubes at that time. Because it does get oil in a couple tubes, even though the tubes were new about 2 years back.
I'll look into cking / doing valve seals at that time.
