my lil 6.1 died at the 1000ft mark at the track

The PM rods are better starting in '09... not sure how good. The GM PM rods are strong enough to last in a full season or more in 550 HP endurance applications. My son has them in his dirt car and they are a favorite in his neck of the woods.

Again the early oil pumps can't keep up to performance applications...

The cross drilled debate has been debated for 40 years with no clear winner at least in my mind. I never had a problem with one...that used to be the hot set-up in the 60's when all we had to run were stock cranks or outrageously expensive billet stuff.

I'd like to hear more aboutt the 'bad' combustion chamber design...

I'm not sure when this whole Gen 3 design was started but it seems to me that after Daimler got involved the whole line-up of Chrysler vehicles suffered from the poor design and/or materials in their engine line-up. Personally I've owned a 4.0 with piston issues and a 2.7 with water pump design flaws. Seems the bean counters had a lot of sway... and the German 'engineers' should have stayed working for the railroads.