[Cliff R]

Having 7 out of 8 backwards and who knows how many rods facing the WRONG direction is plain and simple FUBAR. We can continue these discussions and feed this thread for days, weeks, months and even years and NOTHING gets better until the fundamental issues that have been discovered here are corrected.

I certainly hope that the OP is getting all this down in my over 500 pages of notes, and plans on addressing the issues at some point.

I've purchased and installed sets of pistons with zero offset. Most were the two valve releif variety so you had to pay close attention to how you hung them on the rods as the larger reliefs needed to end up under intake valves, the smaller ones under exhaust valves. At the sme time the flats of the rods end up running together and chamfered portions out agains the filet in the crankshaft.

Not overly difficult but does require exact precision to get all eight in where they need to be.

I suspect what happens with these Pontiac engines is that having #2 as the lead cylinder instead of #1 throws some folks off some and why we see this sort of thing happening more than it should. I seen some very well experience engine machinists and pretty smart folks mess that deal up and why I loved to see the aftermarket start offering affordable full floating forged rods. At least you didn't have to get the press out and collapse a few pistons when they got hung on the rods incorrectly........FWIW