Friday night, I got the motor out , removed the wiring harness, and the breaklines. I did my first clean up with oven cleaner. Now you could see red overspray from the factory A scheme paint. Let it dry overnight.

Sat, morning I did a real good job of sanding and preping, then belive it or not, I went and got 4 spray bombs of Plasti-kote bright white enamel, and went at it. Next...The motor was weeping water from the head gaskets, so I took it further apart, and installed some head studs. I also took this opurtunity to change the cam. "That turned out to be a bad idea". (but we won't go there right now) At the time, there was an AMC dealership just down the road and you could still buy the factory engine paint in those 1/2 size spray bombs. 4 of them later and the 390 was LOOKING GOOD! Now the fresh white and engine paint can dry for the night.

Sunday morning. All is ready and everything goes in with out a hitch, white headers and all. By dinnertime it was ready to drive. We fired it up and were ready to breakin the new cam. With-in minutes of firing it up it was missing real bad and had trouble holding a high idle. This was not a good thing, it got real hot, real fast, we shut if off and let it cool down. We came back 1/2 hour later to find the color of the new oil to resembler silver matialic paint. Let's just say that Joie has to take a different car to work in the morning.

I pulled the 390 out again monday night. There was exstensive damage, It took the rest of the week before the motor was going back in. After all that, I only got 2 months and 1,100 miles out of this 390 before I felt it wasn't safe to drive, I was sure it was gonna scatter on me. The wrist pins were loose and when the engine was cold it sounded kind of like it had a solid lift cam... but it didn't!