Yea, if he ran a half a gallon of fuel through the engine and
the temps never got over 185*f, the con rod was under
quite a bit of un-due stress. It's a shame to see people
buy a hi-dollar engine and trash it by not doing a proper
break-in procedure on it. I used to watch guys at the
301, take fresh engines and race them right out of
the box. It was funny watching those engines throw
a rod out the side of the crankcase, when they only
had about a gallon of fuel ran through them.
One of them even told me that the six-hundred dollar
race engines that he runs are only good for about a
gallon of fuel before they loose compression or throw
a con rod. He stated, "That's the price you have to
pay to be fast on this track".