Early in the year I started building a 360 based stroker motor to replace the limp wristed 340 that was in the car. Spent most of the spring acquiring the parts, waiting on machine work, and assembling the short block.
Once I got the short block done, I planned to pull out the 340 to harvest some parts from it. This was mid-may. Literally, the day before I planned to take it off the road, I got rear ended. So I was working on the motor and doing collision repair work simultaneously.
Finally the last week of June I had gotten the motor finished and installed, as well as completed the collision repairs.
From day one I wasn't convinced all was right with the motor. Family obligations prevented me from shaking it down as thoroughly as I would have liked. In limited driving, I had noticed what seemed like excessive oil consumption, and I had some pinging along with blue smoke out the back.
While building the motor I had to make a budgetary decision regarding what I wanted to do with the cylinder heads. The budget wasn't there for the aftermarket heads, so I had hoped to reuse the original J-heads with intentions of upgrading to some RHS/Indy X-heads down the road. The J-heads were a little too rough to just bolt back on though. Long story short, I purchased a set of rebuilt J-heads from a reputable vendor and used those. Looked like a pretty good compromise... at first.
Fast forward to August, I drove the car to Columbus for Mopar Nationals. 200 miles from home I had to add 2 quarts of oil. It was smoking like crazy. Over the course of the weekend, I kept dumping in oil and changing spark plugs. I darn near ran out of oil on the way home.
I'll spare you some of the details, but after poking around trying to confirm the cause of the consumption, I pulled the intake and discovered oil just pooled on top of the intake valves. Further tear down on the heads confirmed the guides were shot. Looks like the clearances weren't set correctly.
Contacted the vendor of the heads and they agreed to go through them again. Six weeks later I get them back. I reinstall them and after no more than an tank of gas, the oil consumption returns. I pull the intake to find oil just running down the valve stems. Mid November now.
At that point I decided enough was enough and demanded a refund. The final compensation ended up being a set of bare RHS/Indy X heads. I called IMM and they let me send them in as cores and they shipped a set of their fully prepped RHS heads. I received them just after Christmas.
Since then I've been working to get them installed. Had a few minor set backs on the way, but this morning I finally got it running again. Weather was chilly (34 degrees), but dry and the roads were salt free, so I got it out for a shake down run.
Still got some tuning to do, but it runs great. I took a bunch of timing out of it while fighting the detonation with the old heads. I need to dial it back up again. Need to get the choke opening rate dialed in has well. Might need just a bit more pre-load on the lifters too, but I'll get it there.
Overall, I'm just tickled to have a running car again and put the woes of 2011 behind me. Going to put some miles on this thing in 2012, including a Hot Rod Power Tour.
I know how you feel, but dealing with tremec trans. Sometimes the only thing keeping ya from throwing wrenches is knowing it'll just cost more, Glad to hear it and hopefully be joining you in 4 months.
