Well, the 49 3800 developed a knocking sound over the past few weeks. I feared the worst. Today I confirmed the worst.
Dropped the oil pan after lunch, found all of the rod bearings to be WWWWWAAAAYYYY out of spec. #2 actually have little models of the grand canyon evenly centered in the 4 quadrants of the rod bearing(it it were a clock, 2, 4 8, and 10 pm.) and its clanging noise matched the knock under load.
So I put everything back together, put the pan back on.
Did I mention the cable control for activating the PTO is routed right under the pan fiddle tight so that it makes everything just difficult enough that re-aligning the oil pan is next to impossible.
So it looks like I will be pulling for overhaul.
Funny to me is that I pulled some of the other caps, and some have been machined for inserts, and some(like #2) have not.
