Well I we mangaed to get the car down to Roebling to race this weekend but things went badly. The car had not been running well as I was re-wiring everything, but I attributed it not running well to having sat in the garage for three weeks with a weak battery and little starting.

I got it off the trailer at Roebling Thursday night and drove it around the paddock a bit and didn't like the way it sounded. It was flat, idled rough, and seemed to be getting a little worse.

I took it out for the first session on Friday morning but it wouldn't pull much over 4k and really ran poorly. I bought it in after a couple of laps. Had a look and the engine didn't have the plug I had on the drivers side that seals that tube that goes down into the block. It used to have one, but it blew the plug off. Hmmmmm.

After fiddling some more with it things were definitely worse - there was a plume of smoke coming from my oil can that was definitely under pressure. We borrowed a compression gauge from Gerald Potts (has a nice 325 ITR car BTW!) and found compression was pretty bad across the board:

1- 0 psi
2 - 20 psi
3 - 1XX psi (can't remember but was the strongest)
4 - 120 psi
5 - 90 psi
6 - around 90psi

Damaged rings. Might as well check valves too so we pulled the cover - 12 operating valves and no stuck ones with good oil flow (This check would have made a good Bevis and Butthead episode. All we needed was Mr. Anderson to walk up and say "What the hell?" in the middle of the flying oil scene). Actually, oil pressure is good all around at 40-50 psi when hot and above idle, about 20 psi at idle. Motor has 20 hours on it and was reported to be just rebuilt as new when we bought the car two years ago.

I think I killed the motor at CMP a few weekends back. It was strong at CMP, but I might have been too rough on it. I was running it regularily to 7k and sometimes a bit more in the AutoX section to avoid a shift to fourth. Probably a dumb idea. And, I now can recall the last couple of laps I backed off the motor because it didn't "feel quite right" but couldn't find anything wrong. It still ran well right after that weekend but then the stuff I described at the beginning of this post started happing.

So, now that I've got to pull this thing and re-ring it (as well as bearings, head check, etc.) what do you Z guys recommend as a standard shift point?

Anything you can recommend for the future or for my impending rebuild that can help?'

Ron