AFM kinda hit the nail on the head with running in the JLR. The piston and sleeve fit is not nearly as tight as many of the motors out there now. I personally don't understand why so many mfr's do this since it puts a huge strain on the rod bushings and wrist pin bushings. Alot of people wonder if the JLR is not so tight will it last as long? I'm on my second gallon with it, and I'm running the original rod and everything else. Compression is fine..... and I do a test similar to afm's.......(afew drops of oil in the compression chamber turn the motor to close to TDC and observe if there are air bubbles at the sides of the piston skirt wanting to leak out. Some leakage is okay alot is not.

My LSN settings are similar to AFM's with 8 turns out. In fact that's almost stock from the factory I believe. It seems rich but it's not. It's what the motor wants. Just give it what it wants. These motors are like children finicky sometimes but happy when you give them what they want.

Looking at Artificial-I's piston brought another thought to mind. Outside of the misplaced compression ring.........what kind of fuel are you running? What I really noticed is that there are almost no carbon deposits on the piston. That makes me wonder if your fuel has enough castor in it. I know there are raging debates about synthetic vs Castor oil as lubricants but I am a strong advocate of CASTOR!! I run Tornado fuel...........I don't know for sure what the castor content is but I'm thinking it's probably about 40% of the total oil content of 9%. The compression due to carbonization in my motor is actually going up! Nothing lubricates our engines at top end like castor. Previous to Tornado I ran Byrons fuel(also high castor content) My engines always last a long time. This "my engine needs to be perfectly clean inside" is just plain wrong. Carbonization is actually a GOOD thing.

I have run the low castor fuels before, and my motors never lasted very long. I run Tornado or Byrons because I know my engines will last.

I also experimented abit with compression on the motor. I actually took out a .004 shim, and the motor never fussed one bit(total head clearance .018)
No detonation......and the motor picked up abit of bottom end.