I'm not sure how much interest there is in this sort of thing but at one point I was asked to post my results, so here they are.<br /><br />I lost the middle cylinder, scored pretty well plus the rings were fused into the piston. Needless to say no compression, the whole thing was in line to be bored.<br /><br />I ended up going .010 over and using Vertex pistons. I heard good things about them and they were very reasonable. New rod bearings were installed, I could have reused the old ones but I lost two of them and it really didn't add all that much to the overall cost to replace them all. All the bearings were installed with plenty of engine reassembly grease. I used one of those generic gasket kits. it worked but it had duplicates and lots of stuff I didn't need, but that's better then missing parts. Everything went back together well. I used permatex flange gasket maker (gas proof, remains flexible, and has a good heat rating) on the flange between the base and the block and the seal retainer. New seals were installed, which is snap on the top but a pain on the bottom. Every thing was torqued down per the service manual (Clymer), and I didn't have any parts left over!<br /><br />All that being said it didn't go 100% as planned. I mis-read the service manual and had all the rods installed in the pistons upside down, but caught it before they were bolted in. The ring compressor I bought at the local auto parts store was a real let down. It was bent at the bottom so it scratched the coating on one of my pistons. I ended up using my old one (it's an antique so I wanted to retire it) and installed all the pistons with out a hitch. Also, one real brain cramp on my part, bought and used thread sealer, not locker on the rod cap bolts. I was able to remove all of them, clean the treads and apply locker through the front of then engine, disaster avoided.<br /><br />The Clymer manual was OK, but nothing to write home about. I think the fact that they cover so many models in one book didn't help the cause, but it did get the job done.<br /><br />The break in has consisted of running it in my yard with the ears and garden hose at idle for 20 minutes on 32:1. I hit the lake today and ran for over an hour over various speeds, toping out at about half throttle. The low end is still kind of rough so I think I need to fine tune the low speed jet a bit more but once the high speed jet kicks in it runs nice and smooth. I'll probably finish off the 32:1 and then move to 50:1 and start working towards WOT.<br /><br /><br />Beside the low end roughness (it never was a very smooth motor in that range anyway) I'm pretty happy. I have about 2 hours on the motor and it hasn't blown up, so that's a good sign. I'm still a little nervous, but I always am until I get some real hours and the bugs worked out of a rebuild.<br /><br />Sorry if this is long winded, but I wanted to share my experience, and my mistakes.<br /><br />And now the money shot. 
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<br />How about that 1968 Duratech 17', all original!<br /><br />Thanks for you help, and sorry if I asked a few stupid (self answered) questions.
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