15% is a fair amount, but seems a bit at odds with a 200 psi reading.
Oil through the guides may not show up with either test.
It was a long time ago, but the seals I bought were from Silver Seal and are/were blue in color.
I can look for the box - I kept it as I had to buy a bunch - and I may have enough left that I could send you some.

Im going off memory.

But best I can think most were in the 7-8 % loss. and maybe 2 or 3 were a little over 10% , Again been a while so I'm not 100% certain of those numbers. After i thought about it I dont think any were in the 15% range

But I do remember all 8 were in the low 200psi range on a compression ck

I went thru the valves right after I bought it and ckd the valve seals at that time and all were present and best I could tell still very pliable. Sorry,,,,but I dont remember what type seals are on it


Whats real odd. This past spring when I changed the oil ( I run straight 30 weight Rotella with a bottle of Lucas ZDDP additive )
And I ran it to Phoenix and back and oil was still on full. Thats about 300 miles round trip give or take.
Its after it gets maybe 400-500 ( approx ) miles on it, it will use a qt every 100-150 miles.

A litle history on the car / engine that I know

Car was done in 2004 running driving, Sometime later ( not sure when )
The fuel pump went out of it several years back. And a new one installed , but turns out the replacement pump was the high pressure variant and flooded the engine thru the carbs ( excessive pressure )
Thats since changed to a lower pressure spec type hemi pump long before I bought it

Ive talked to the man who built it and he feels the fuel washed the rings out of it and never sealed back up .
It had a grand total of 850 miles put on it from spring 2004 until Oct 2020 when I bought the car
Ive since put over 10,000 miles on it. As I have no use for a garage queen and I drive the car A LOT.

One of my concerns to stroke it and get more power out of it was traction. I run a 245-60-15 tire and it can be a little traction limited now.


To build a 2nd engine I figure is mid $20s at a minimum and , upper $20s most likely. And deep down feel like thats an expense I doubt I want to do at this stage in my life. Plus the whole storage issue.


Im plan to have a sit down conversation with a buddy of mine next year at the spring fling and get his thoughts to build mine , Or ?????

Bill you may be right but maybe mid $20......hey it's only money

What oil pan are you running? We used to always run a quart low with stock oil pans on big blocks and Hemis. Because the top quart would ALWAYS disappear. The second quart often would not. I have heard differing opinions as to what was going on. But I have seen many, many times where these engines would lose the top quart of oil when the stock pan was full. And lose it pretty quick, too.

But running a quart low can be dangerous, particularly on a Hemi, so be careful. But it still might be worth a test to see if your major oil consumption is limited to the top quart in the pan or not.

I experienced the same on a 383hp that was still factory build. The top quart always disappeared like clockwork. Fast and no real trace. Always. After a few years I did notice the back of the car had a faint brownish tanish film look. It was VR1 regular oil, not synthetic. Never saw it burn though.

I ran a road race pan on that car so it really wasn’t an issue for starvation.

Oddly I had a 72 440 factory build that smoked a little at high rpm’s guys would notice, but it didn’t use any oil. Ever. Go figure. I didn’t use vr1 back then.

My current car has an unknown history 440, supposed to be 72,000 miles. Haven’t caught it doing anything like that, but has a slight leak. First time I had to add any was this summer and it wasn’t much. It was kinda weird as it was full and then the oil disappeared by the next check. Starting to wonder if vr1 cleans out deposits and the burning begins. This one had synthetic when I got it, but I found it to make the leak worse so I went to the Dino.

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.

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.

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.

Yea,,,,MY money.
Unless of course you're offering ???????


Come on Mike you know you want to ? I'll let you take it for a drive next summer if you do ,,

LoL

Can you guys explain further in terms of "the top quart would disappear" I'm not getting that.

When I put my engine together I marked the oil pan (milodon 31580) in capacity/level. I found it was less capacity (than advertised) when reaching the level of the windage tray, but never experienced a disappearing quart after starting.

A freshly built motor will trap oil in the low points in the casting around the lifter bores and in other above the crankshaft centerline in places that will not drain back into the oil pan on the first start up also in the oil galleys :and on every surface inside the motor that didn't have oil splashed or split on it while being assembled shruggy:

When you fill to the full mark on the factory dipstick, the engine will quickly lose a quart. It won’t go below being a quart low. The one I was talking about did that regularly. It became normal to me so I didn’t freak out after seeing that happen awhile. It’s puzzling to have happen. You don’t see Dino oil burning out the exhaust, the plugs don’t foul, it runs perfect, it’s sealed up. It just goes away. If it were valve seals it should keep going down after first quart. Or you’d see it out the tailpipe.

The one I’m talking about had a 31580 and I resealed the entire engine when I did the chain and put it in the car the first time.

I have heard speculation that it has something to do with the crank vaporizing the oil at that level when run hard. Which would explain the particulars of the problem. I don't know myself why it happened.

I can tell you that I have seen it many times. On stock engines in particular. We used to have to keep a sharp eye on our oil level. It needed to be about a quart low in order not to be adding oil regularly. At the same time, we didn't want it to get much lower due to the risk of losing oil pressure under hard accel or decel. Fortunately there usually wasn't much change when kept a quart low unless the engine was getting tired.

But the top quart of oil in big blocks had a nasty habit of exiting the engine some way or other. I have never experienced that with any small block. Has anyone experienced that with the small blocks?

Mine will continue to drop / lose oil.

I'll get a slight puff of smoke " sometimes " out the tail pipe. Sometimes when I romp on it a little .

I have some leaks but nothing that leaves more than a dime size spot on the garage floor at times. Nothing I feel leaks enough to be an oil usage leak. Nothing on the bottom or backside of the car after a trip.


I'm driving it to Phoenix today and then back home tomorrow. So I'll see how much it uses this trip.




When / IF I pull mine down . Pistons are pretty much worthless so they will become desk ornaments. And If I thought I could offset the cost of the stroker lower end by selling off the crank and rods . Then I might upgrade.
But deep down I dont see that happening. Not enough to make it worthwhile to me anyway.


Thanks all for the feedback . it gives me some food for thought.

Something I thought of was the oil being thrown up into the bores by the crank, and that somehow got past the rings a bit at a time. Being that it was more oil than normally gets there. I’ve never heard this about other brand cars and really this is the first I’ve heard somebody else notice it. I told the people when I sold that car and they just sorta looked at me funny.

Also I’ve never had a small block do it. Had a 22,000 mile 79 truck in the mix. Others were high miles, but they didn’t use any oil and even didn’t leak like big blocks seem to when I get them.

I have a stock stroke and bore hemi 11.5 alum head solid roller. It will do everything you're looking for. As far as the pinging I'd almost consider changing to E-85 and enjoy it as is.

Maintain a certain level of HP and Torque while keeping the street-abilty.

Use less compression and more street friendly gas but make the same HP/TQ. Hemi's are detonation resistant. But 12.5 seems high.

Sometimes the stroker kit cost negates some costly machining: Crank Grinding, Rod Re-sizing. That may be more prevalent with the higher volume Small and Big Block kits. I didn't think there were many Hemi stroker kits out there.

I drove Troy's Hemi Dart back from Spring Fling 2 years ago. It's got a 472 stroker with I think 10.5 compression. Very mild easy cruising. Even with the cross ram. He has a 110 centerline on the cam. But when you get on it... It's another animal.

Thanks Steve, I want to talk to Troy next spring .

See you then