well, as these stories often go, this project is not moving as quickly as I had hoped. when I started getting the 383 ready to drop in, I found a few things I didn't like. first, since I had to change out the single plane high rise intake for the Holley dual plane that I was going to use, I pulled up the intake and found a pushrod laying in the lifter valley. odd thing was, the motor wasn't missing any. this got me thinking that perhaps the guy who built this motor may have been a bit careless, or worse. I was looking things over while I had the valve covers off, and down at the bottom edge where small pools of oil often lay, I stuck my finger in the oil to see what it felt like. there were small pockets of sludge, and in bright light, it was shiny gray sludge. so much for my "fresh" 383. so I tore it down completely. bearings didn't look too good, and afterpulling the pistons, I realized that they used stock 350 pistons for this 383, they shaved the tops of the pistons down for deck clearance, and apparently didn't clearance the skirts properly, so the crank caught a skirt and snapped off a chunk, which got turned into millions of engine destroying particles. so... I kept the World Product heads and the block, and junked the rest. the block went to the machine shop (great local guy, and has done alot of good work for friends of mine over the years). it has now been dipped and cleaned a few times (he's thorough!), bored, and cleaned again. it's getting a new Eagle crank, new rods, pistons, and so on. not taking any chances! once all the parts get here, it will be assembled to check for clearance, and will finally start to go back together. really wanna run this boat this year... wish me luck!
