Well, got the motor out of the car this weekend finally and got it tore apart. Just as I thought, we were definitely getting blow by somewhere. Amazingly enough, the pistons are STILL only 5thousandths between them and the walls...BUT the blow by is coming from the rings, which are plain worn out. They are over 30thousandths worth of gap....
No wonder I was getting blow-by. The heads are in great shape inside, running a bit fat but nothign I can't remedy with some tuning (it had also jsut been idling alot in and out of the trailer and garage before the tear down.)
So, I doubt I will be replacing the pistons...Gonna just order another set of good rings from JE and just go back at what I got. I AM going to be sending my heads to K-Star Performance and spend some money getting them ported professionally and I'll make a cam change. I had a few rollers getting chewed up on my Harland Sharp rockers which put some nasty ugliness on the tops of a few valves SO I gotta get a few valves and I gotta replace some rockers. I also noticed the last two years that I didnt like how much angle was getting put on my rockers to the intakes so I'm going to take this opportunity to get offset intake rockers from Harland and go from there.
Questino, what is the BEST way to measure for how much offset I need? I'm staying wtih my Dart Heads that are 23* and they have the 2.08/1.60 valves. Anyone suggest/advise a different rocker? I'd like to hear some idea's. I like Harland Sharp, have ran them on my motor's since i was 16 and this is the first set that I've seen some wear on the rockers. MIGHT be because the cam is so big and so much seat pressure.
So, gonna be busy these next couple weeks....gotta get everything cleaned and back from machine shop and back to PA to reinstall.
Scott