That's interesting. Certainly look fine.

 

Think you said the exhausts were fine ( not leaking oil ). I would almost be tempted just to replace those two intake seals and see if that cures the problem.
I had a similar problem on a rebuilt 289 Ford small block back in the day.. Replaced the leaking seals and was good. I assume you went with new valves on your build? Of course if the valve stems had any sign of an issue then the head comes off anyway for replacement.

 

Head is probably already off.

Literally everything in the head was new with the build

Kelford 214-b cams
Kelford valve springs
Supertech inconel exhaust valves
Supertech black nitride intake valves
GSC viton valve stem seals
GSC manganese valve guides

 

Well the head is off. VERY VERY apparent that the oil is coming from the #3 exhaust valves. The seals looked fine so perhaps it's the valve guides. Shop is going to get the head pressure tested.

I'm surprise how much carbon is on the piston tops for 4,000 miles and almost 95% E85 usage. The only thing I can think of is that it happened during break in on 91 and when it was super rich at idle while I was figuring things out.

Also surprised #3 is cleaner, I thought burning oil would make it gunkier, not cleaner.

 

So it was the exhausts on the #3 cylinder then. #3 looks like it got a SeaFoam treatment. Seems modern oils has a lower ash content then gasoline does. Like you said was probably when you were breaking it in on 91. Those 10:1 pistons have a pretty good roof on them. Seems like carbon likes to build on top of those piston roofs. Wonder if that early build up was part of the reason you couldn't run much timing at first.

 

Still waiting for this damn machine shop. Quickly losing faith, again. Most likely going to send my spare head to another machine shop.

After dealing with this industry for fifteen + years it still somehow blows my mind how elastic time is for the people in it. If I treated my career in my industry the same way, I would probably still have a crap job with no responsibility and no reports twenty years in. Mind boggling.

 

Who are you currently using Bryan?

 

Rob's Auto Machine in Hayward, same machine shop all the local shops like Speed Element, GST, FFTEC, etc use.

 

That sucks, I feel your pain. At first I thought I just had bad luck when it came to sending out work, turns out not so much... The only thing I have found that helps is to try and deal with a place that can do the whole job under one roof, that way the finger pointing is somewhat minimized. Still though only once has a job I had to outsource finish on time.

 

Okay. When I had some cylinder heads done by them. Simple things like resurfacing, it took like 3 weeks.

 

Damn man. I got my head back from head games faster than that, and they did a full race port...lol

 

100% agree. It's annoying how many grey areas for wait time there is in the automotive industry. Some people on this forum are actually OK with letting their car be at a shop for a year before they get it back. I think that's ridiculous and unacceptable. I hope that estimated completion dates backed by discounts become more common in the future.

 

Surprisingly, the head is done. Going back on the car this coming week. I am going to miss one of my October track days which bums be out because it's the config I want to break my personal best on. Rest of the month is super packed work wise.

Of course, I have zero information of what actually went wrong. Next time anything happens I am using a different machine shop so when I spend $1k+ I actually have somebody communicate with me.

 

Glad it's getting back together. Sucks they couldn't tell you what they found.

 

Did you get a discount for waiting so long?