Long story short, it turned out that my 452 had NOT been honed w/ plates the previous time it was freshened up (despite the receipt stating it had). When the current machinist strapped down the plates, the top of the bore distorted significantly. The bad news is since the block was already .060" o.s. and the bores were on the loose side, we made the decision to simply re-hone it w/o the plates AGAIN because there wasn't enough material left to do it w/ them unless I was ready to drop the $$$ for custom 4.38+" pistons. So, I've run in the 10s w/ non-plate-honed bores and can't even guess how much that may have cost in peak performance... 5 HP? 10 HP?

Then we ran into the same situation where my backup 4.360" block that had also supposedly been done w/ plates also had NOT. This time I went ahead and had it re-done properly at a 4.375" bore. You can guess what my opinion is of the two other shops that were responsible for the earlier prep work.