Well there is 250 miles on the new motor, everything was running good, looking good, and definately feeling good. I am going thru, what I presume to be proper break in procedures, not going over like 3k rpm and not accelerating too fast.
However my observations (please any criticism or ideas are welcome):
Oil on top of my valve cover, the lord only knows wher that is comming from
Got a CEL again after Dan cleared it (about 15 or 20 miles later),
Some oil is driping to the pavement, I can't see where it is comming from yet.

However, I don't see any smoke out of the rear.
I'll compression check that bad boy and let you guys know what I come up with.
The first 150 miles, nothing that was mentioned above was happening.

I had the same problem with mine after rebuild. One of my seals for the spark plug holes was leaking..made oil all over my valve cover. Also you might want to check the bolts that hold the oil pan on. I found two on mine that came loose after a few hundred miles..

RxR this seems to be my exact problem. I pulled my spark plug wires out, and #1 and #4 had oil comming into them... I suppose I should change out the spark plug gasket

I experienced a similar situation after my motor was rebuilt. You might want to retorque the head.

Don't let the leaks get ya down... just patch em as you find them and make sure you don't run low on oil. Leaks are inevitable, my freeze plugs were all bleeding green the first few miles.

BTW, I'm taking the opposite road with the breakin just for comparison. Since you and Kaiser are going the easy route (being nice to the engine) I'm biting the bullet and doing the hard breakin, took it to redline the first 10 miles... and regularly revving it all over the range trying to work it in at all RPMs.

Please let me know your exact gap on the Total seals, and soon we'll know for sure which is the "right" way to break in on OUR engines once we do some compression tests and compare oil burnoff. Mine looks like I'm burning about a quart every 1000 miles but it's not broken in yet so it's too early to tell.

awesome about the break in procedures. ive been wondering about that since i read that post a while back...

>Please let me know your exact gap on the Total seals

Umm..... You're supposed to gap them? I was under the impression that they were gapless.... Oh shit.

You're joking right?

http://forums.2gnt.com/dcforum/DCForumID16/5691.html#6

The middle ring is gapless, yes... but you have to set the gap for both the overlapping rings, then twist them over each other to make them "gapless". I'm sure your engine builder gapped them for you.

Still... it'd have been nice to know the gap for comparison.

engine builder = me.

Now I'm confused too. what's the deal with those total seal rings?

he he, Dan you're way of breaking in the motor kind of scares me :P I wanna see how it turns out!

if it works, kewl

Ok, well the deal with totalseals as I understand it is:

You're supposed to trim down the rings so they sit at a certain gap while installed in the block. This is so they allow a little oil through, and so when the rings heat expand the ring ends don't touch. They're not pre-gapped because your .020 over bore may be a few hundredths off ie .022 or something. By trimming/gapping them you compensate and create the perfect sized ring for each cylinder.

The middle "gapless ring" is actually 2 rings, each gapped the same. Then you turn one ring around so there is no physical break in the circle. The two rings on top of each other create a "total seal" (even though oil and pressure can still get behind and around the ring).

Confirmed that Howell specifies the rings (8.5 compression, .020 over, JE & Totalseals) be gapped at:

Top: .023
Middle: .018
Bottom: Doesn't matter

You could always drop the bedplate from under the car and redo the rings... Jamesman did, but I have no idea how he compressed the rings into the cylinders from underneath.

Okay after the oil got in the spark plug wells, I pulled the valve cover, put new gaskets on the plug wells, sealed it with some high temp silicone, and re-assembled.
Did a comp test after that to just to make sure. Results
235
195
195
230.
Plugs 1 and 4 were the 2 that had the oil in them, so I am sure some of the oil got down in the pistons when I pulled the plugs out. I'll comp test it tonite when I get home, because I need to do my 500 mile oil change, might as well change out the plugs too.

did you use the god book?(aka factory serivce manual) you have not only a torque sequence but it has 3 different torque specs...i had a leak from cyl one b/c it was torqued right...if you have a haynes or god book i'd check it...worth a look

Are you talking about the valve cover torque? Or the head gasket?
Cause if you are talking about the HG, they I am with you on that one. You wanna know what the Chilton book says (not verbatim, but you get the Idea). The middle bolts are to 50 ft.lbs, the outers are to 20 ft.lbs, then you go in a sequence a few times at that torque, then after that, it says now go back to the first bolt and give them all a quarter turn!!!
What the shit is that kinda crap!!