[66Submarine]

Well, what do you mean by "...it still doesn't burn oil, in the classic sense of the term..."? It burns oil or it doesn't. 20,000 easy miles is pretty much a brand new engine IMO; no excuse for any problems at that point. Oily plugs tells me that it kind of has to burn some oil, you know? Not to bad-mouth your guy or anything, but I'd be very unhappy with the results you have had so far, assuming I paid for a rebuilt engine. What does the leakdown tester say about it, BTW?

The truck my father is driving now has a super basic 350 shortblock with late-model vortec heads and flat-top pistons, with an Edelbrock 1406 AFB copy on a generic dual-plane intake--all of which is of course not a GM combo. Probably over 100,000 on it now, and the plugs are all beautiful, the exhaust is clean to the touch, it gets fantastic mileage, etc. That's what I expect, more or less. Oily plugs, etc. to me=shot-out super-high-mileage junkyard engine to putter around town with, not a new rebuild. My <$200 junkyard 250 six in the truck I'm driving right now very probably has over 100,000 on it and similarly performs flawlessly and runs very clean.

"You are not correct about the catch can..." I didn't question how well it ran like that, I just questioned how it wasn't essentially a giant vacuum leak. From what I saw, the only real restriction is whatever the media you stuffed it with provides (BTW, why use an abrasive cloth like scotch brite for filter media?). You say without the PCV it pulled a lot of extra oil, which reinforces my unrestricted vacuum leak theory.

"the PCV valve didn't match my engine performance characteristics" You keep saying this, but you haven't mentioned what makes your engine so special. What heads/intake/cam specs/compression, etc? The hot-rod small block is kind of the definitive "hot-rod" engine of the last few decades...

"...the failure of the stock PCV valve is, in my opinion, definitely the main cause of the problems with the carburetor, and resultant mileage issues..." That's kind of my point. Most of your problem was nothing to do with the PCV valve; it was from carburetor issues that you say resulted from it, and you actually say that the valve failed.

I still stand by my original statement that I can put a hot-rod 283 together in my yard and have it run just like it should with the normal PCV valve; it's not anything new that hasn't been done a million times before. Early SBC's didn't even have the PCV setup to begin with (road draft tube). The PCV is only meant to ventilate the crankcase--I don't even see the website of the people that want me to pay $130 for their PCV valve trying to claim anything different, or even implying it. Maybe your carburetor's factory tuning worked slightly better with the magick PCV valve, and maybe tuning would be easier--I could see that. But, I swear to God, I will cut the 283 I have up into little pieces with a plastic knife and eat it if I can't make it run like it should without that. The PCV is not there for economy or power. Notice that racing applications will use a vacuum pump dumping out into nowhere instead of a PCV system feeding back into the engine?

"Yesterday, my 2001 Saturn blew a head gasket, and the water pump failed at the same time." I think the water pump failure might have preceded the head gasket failure by a couple minutes...