Been beating the hell out of it on the roads near my house for a while. Day before I was to leave to Silver Lake sand dunes here in Michigan, on a 1 - 2 shift, it started to make horrible noise.... thought I blew it up. Pulled to the side and got out...no oil, no holes...but god awful mechanical noise. Limp it a mile home. Pull valve covers. Number 5 exhaust pushrod pushed through the rocker. This also took out the intake pushrod and made it a nice "s" shape. Next day ordered chrome moly pushrods and new rockers.
Installed them and loaded it on the trailer.
First drive out to the dunes I noticed my blow off valve stopped working. No biggie, don't really need it with 6 psi. Thrashed it hard that friday night. Installed a 6 gallon water jug in the back to ensure I don't run out of water to spray to keep the IAT numbers down. Runs hard and strong. Exhaust likes to glow and shoot flames. Managed to roll it once lol.
Get home and decide to see why the BOV was no longer working.... WTF is the nut!?!??! and WHY IS THERE A NUT !??!?!?! Pull the intake elbow and use my snake camera...find the plate hanging out on the #5 intake valve. Luckily its a huge plate or else it would of been a bad bad bad day. The threads had no trace of loctite.