[boothkc]

Rich,
sounds like you have lots of experiance and a good builder, but some bad luck.

We run 2 GTSs in SCCA here in Norcal. The motors have been very reliable and are engine dyno'd to 445hp to be SCCA compliant. We upgraded the quality of the cranks (SCAT), rods, and forged pistons, but run the Edelbrock heads and spec manifold, cam, carb etc. The original Panoz engine internals were pretty junky and easily improved w/o "cheating" on HP.

Sounds like an early MIF (maintenance induced failure), but I'd really get them to run the new engine on an engine dyno first and tune it etc. We bring the headers and all externals to the builder and 5-10h of dyno time is put on them to make sure all is well before they are installed.

We "refresh" them every 100hrs.

In 4yrs of running the GTS I haven't had a single mechanical DNF (except for a tire puncture) and have won 2 4hr Endurance races. This can/should be a very reliable fun car....

Keep the Faith.

Kevin