[Captainfab]

That last engine issue sounds to me like not running oil with proper amounts of ZDDP for a flat tappet cam. That's a sure way to wipe out a flat tappet cam and lifters. Then the resulting ground up cam lobes got pumped into the bearings, eating up the bearings and chewing up the crank.

Originally Posted by skoffice

Hey man your build is lookin awesome! I think a lot of people will agree that you have some awesome work and great progress going into this thing! I just wanted to throw my .02 in on the engine.

I got one of the same engines you are looking at getting for my dad's 71 K10 about 4 years ago. It ran alright for the first year and a half, didn't put a whole lot of miles on it. Maybe 10k at the most. Then it started to run a little sluggishly, and come to find out it had sunk a couple of exhaust valves! So after having the heads redone at around 20k we switched from an Edelbrock to a Holley carb and it opened up a little more power (now it could kinda roast the tires again). Then I put the last 10k miles on it and it just ran like a pig, had no power at all and got the $hittie$t gas mileage. I was working at a machine shop at the time(little over a year ago) building race engines, so I figured, what better time to tear this thing down and see what the hell was wrong!!! Anyway, I tore it down and to no surprise, the cam had gone FLAT and the crankshaft had more scratches and wear than the bearings did!! So I don't know if I just got a bad one or what, but I after seeing what this engine did, I am warning people about the lower level crate engines. We came to the conclusion that they must be using some sort of cheap castings in their components now. The block was just fine, a good 4 bolt block, but the components were garbage. It was unfortunate too that I was just beyond their 30k/3 year warranty..

If you would like to, PM me and I can hook you up with my shop in Elk Grove, not sure which part of Norther Cal you are in, but they can build you a great engine for close to the same price, and this way you have someone's shop to go back and talk to rather than being on hold on another 1-800 number lol.

Joe