[Rubber Duck]

After a while of cruising and having fun spirited drives here and there i believe high iats and acting like a fool in 90* weather caused some new windows and flying wrist pins in my 376.
Fast forward damn near a year shes about to get a new heart! Long awaited DART Lsnext 427 from TMS.
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From any perspective / any picture. . .
You 'Done' a good job..

And yes; keeping both the engine temps (oil & coolant), as well as the mass flow (iat's) 'Cool', is very, very important. . .

 

[Rubber Duck]

Best lessons learned are often hard on ya, this time it hit my pocket pretty hard.

Hard head makes for a soft ass… as my pop would say

..Smart Pop. . .

The two rear cylinders on these engines tend to run hotter than the others.
This makes them very sensitive to destructive self-detonation.

To better understand this. . .
Get an accurate laser infrared, non-contact heat gun / thermometer.

Make a hard pass, get out of the car, open hood and start pulling the trigger
close up on different areas the engine, and you will see.

 

[Rubber Duck]

And here comes the little gremlins that always seem to come with projects like this! Do these clearances look abnormal to anyone else? i have about 6 pushrods that are situated very close to the casting of the head.
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Funny you say that! Thats the two that decided to exit the party🤣

Oh No. . .Now you have really opened up a can of worms..
First, as I recall, this was a complete engine you purchased. . .Correct!

 

[Rubber Duck]

Yessir had it built. I emailed dustin at Thompson and he assures that they have always encountered this on the exh side of the FED m311 castings and havent had an issue. However mine are on the intake rockers🤔

Since I don't have sufficient info regarding your issue, and I don't desire to get in between a vendor and his customer, I am simply going to attempt to give you some info below, which might help you.

While your issue might not be a simple rocker arm / pushrod length issue, below is a post I made to this forum some time back, as well as a video, which might help you begin to sort things out.

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A couple of comments from this video:
When push rod is ‘TO LONG’ the contact patch will be more towards the exhaust side.
When push rod is ‘TO SHORT’ the contact patch will be more towards the intake side.

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Also, please watch this video regarding push rod length, versus rocker arm / mid-lift geometry.

Enjoy..