Seriously, this Chicken motor is one of the most tortured 109 blocks that I can remember. especially considering that it was a stock build.
A few other ledgendary 109s would have to be.
*Morgan Haden's first Turbo Buick. Back in the day before good data loggers and wide band 02's, this thing had many hundreds of eleven second passes over many years. Other than the valve cover gaskets, the long block had never been apart. He drove the crap out of it every day. He had a baby seat tucked inside the roll bar. Was a regular at car shows. What was really amazing was that he didn't even start racing the thing untill it had over 200,000 miles on the engine.
*Mike's (Nordy racer) GN. Bill Anderson built 109 engine that did 9s for many years faithfully with no issuse. Not sure how many mid to high 9 second passes it had on it when he sold it, but I'm sure that it was in the hundreds.
Looking back on these ledgendary 109s, they all had one thing in common. A safe tune...
Mike Barnard