11-12-2018, 05:58 PM
Finally got around to running a compression test on all cylinder. Was pretty quick and easy with a remote starter switch. Everything came back good, all cylinders were between 135-145 with one cylinder showing 150 on the dial. I reached out to the main Mopar site I visit to hopefully gain some old man wisdom but didn't really get any.
I got to thinking it may be related to a combination of a lack of any kind of baffling in the oil pan along with the oil not making it back to the pan quick enough. I do have a windage tray and high volume oil pump but didn't do any kind of real oiling mods to the block when I had the chance. This checks all the boxes that explain why the issue only seems to happen intermittently at high RPMs. A 4 quart pan is pretty small for this kind of application especially when half the oil is going to be slammed one side most of the time.
Another good possibility is I did in fact burn up my valve guides to some degree and they're sticking a bit near redline. I'm not as sure about this theory but it seems likely due to the fact I broke-in my engine with poor valvetrain oiling since the rocker shafts were on backwards. If things got bad enough to bend 6 pushrods, I wouldn't be surprised to find more damage.
The last possibility is that my rings just aren't seated as well as they should be. The symptoms suggest this but the compression and leak down test results don't really support this.
Sooooo basically I'm stuck with a bunch of bad guesses until I at least pull a cylinder head. I'm thinking it's probably best to just pull the entire engine and go through it over the winter. I'm not making any refrigerator bowls since the car is far from track worthy safety-wise and autocrossing is over except for MBCA. We'll see, all I'm really missing is an engine stand to make it happen and I could have it out in an afternoon for sure.
I got to thinking it may be related to a combination of a lack of any kind of baffling in the oil pan along with the oil not making it back to the pan quick enough. I do have a windage tray and high volume oil pump but didn't do any kind of real oiling mods to the block when I had the chance. This checks all the boxes that explain why the issue only seems to happen intermittently at high RPMs. A 4 quart pan is pretty small for this kind of application especially when half the oil is going to be slammed one side most of the time.
Another good possibility is I did in fact burn up my valve guides to some degree and they're sticking a bit near redline. I'm not as sure about this theory but it seems likely due to the fact I broke-in my engine with poor valvetrain oiling since the rocker shafts were on backwards. If things got bad enough to bend 6 pushrods, I wouldn't be surprised to find more damage.
The last possibility is that my rings just aren't seated as well as they should be. The symptoms suggest this but the compression and leak down test results don't really support this.
Sooooo basically I'm stuck with a bunch of bad guesses until I at least pull a cylinder head. I'm thinking it's probably best to just pull the entire engine and go through it over the winter. I'm not making any refrigerator bowls since the car is far from track worthy safety-wise and autocrossing is over except for MBCA. We'll see, all I'm really missing is an engine stand to make it happen and I could have it out in an afternoon for sure.