['68OrangeSunshine]

I ran my #2 292 from 1977 to 2002 -- for 250,000 miles. At the end I was adding a quart of SAE50 at frequent intervals. I took it into a shop that had a Sun analyzer, and they said I had dead cylinders on #3 and 4. I limped home and started my rebuild project.
During the summer of '77, I was stationed at MCAS Yuma. Not much to do in that town besides working. We troubleshot Harriers on the Night Crew, and had daytimes off. My buddies talked me into rebuilding an engine. I bought a junkyard '67 292, and we proceeded to build that up with TRW forged pistons @ .030 over, but HD stock for most of the other stuff. I got a military discount 10% on parts and 20% on shop work from the Chevy dealer and local vendors. That's the engine that ran for 25 years. We disassembled the OEM '68 292 and put it up in 3 surplus Rolls Royce crates. I took the crates home to Tucson and kept them out of the weather. Twenty five years later, I rebuilt the Original '68 Engine. This time with a Crane 260H cam, .030 over cast pistons, larger [1.84''] intake valves. When I opened up the crates, they were not even rusty.
If you can get another 292 block, you can build that while you blow blue smoke rings with the truck that runs, and swap it over when finished.