318 LA rebuild after losing a valve seat

What I know about plasti-gauge is it is supposed to read between .001 and .003

Ideally you want it to read .002 thousands to represent the oil film on the crank.

So it looks like you are running tight with the pladti-gauge at .001 squishing it out wide.

I usually emery cloth the inside of the rod journal surfaces by hand to make sure they are clean with no high spots, just to clean them not taking off large amonts of material.

See if this helps loosen up one rod journal and try the test again. Does not take much for the bearings to be too tight when you are talking in thousands of an inch.