Any ideas on what's going on with these bearings? It's also worth mentioning that the shop that converted the rods from press fit to floating wrist pins royally fucked up the pin clearance, so the bushings were getting chewed up, as seen in this photo.

Bearing clearances: 0.0015-0.0017" (spec is 0.0009-0.0019" and I was shooting for the high side of the middle of this range)
Crank journal OOR: 0.0001" or less
Crank runout: 0.0003" (spec is < 0.0006")
Main bore OOR: 0.0002"

If I measure the worn looking spots with a ball end micrometer, I generally get measurements within 0.0001" of the non-worn spots so its very minimal wear. In some (but not all) cases the worn spots are actually thicker, indicating that its just a high spot on the surface of the bearing.

Any ideas? Perhaps brass shavings from the rod pin bushings making it through the oil filter and damaging the bearings? Main bore alignment off a bit? I'm kind of leaning towards main bore issues, when I tore it down the first time the main bearings showed fairly significant wear, and I suspect that this motor was overheated in the past and the guy who did the block machining mentioned that it had a low spot in the middle of the decks.

 

Photo's won't load, says errors. You can upload them directly to your post with the image button. This alleviates problems with third party hosting sites.

 

Okay I added them as attachments, the photo button wasn't working in my browser for reasons.

 

Did you look to make sure nothing was between the bearing and the block? You may be right - the mains may need an align bore. Have a machine shop check it out.

 

looks like the wrist pin "alteration" is the culprit for the damage. Why the change when it works fine??

 

Benson is going to clip the caps and line hone the block for me for good measure.

As for the reasoning behind getting new rods, at this point buying a 3rd set of OEM rods and having them machined is about the same price as just buying better aftermarket rods.