So I took it over to this local place which does good work called Crawford Tire. Took a ride with one of their guys and explained what was happening. So the guy drives it, revs it up a little to see where its knocking. Since they deal mainly with tires and don't do much internal work, they send me to Wayne Crawford (I assume a family member, but he has his own shop which does all types of engine repair).

So I go down to Wayne Crawford today right after they looked at it at Crawford Tire. I ask when would be a good time to bring my car in, and he says unfortunately that he is backed up two weeks, but if I wanna bring the car by he can listen to it and give me a opinion. So I explain I have the car with me, so he says bring it around and I'll take a look.

So once I brought it around and started it up he listened to it, opens the throttle body a little to see where its knocking at, and tells me its definitely a rod knock and to drop the pan and check the bearings out, and not to drive it too much.

I am thinking great another rod knock! So anyways I just ordered some plastigauge from Jeg's and am going to be dropping the pan and checking all the bearings. I was told if its not too bad I might be able to polish it up and throw in a new bearing. However I was also told that sometimes these crank kits don't always come with the right size bearings, or that they don't grind all the journals the same amount (i.e. some are .010 and some are .020 ground), so that essentially it may not be balanced well. At this point I am not sure if either of these are the reason but if they are it will be the last time I buy a major internal part from a major parts chain.

I am glad I did find out though, because Wayne specifically told me this is not a wrist pin knock. If I had not had someone look at it I probably would have went along with the notion that it was a wrist pin knock, replaced the pistons, and gotten nowhere.

Cost of todays lesson = $0

Luckily I didn't spend a slimey dime to find this out, both places looked at it free of charge.

If worse comes to worse and this crank is crap now, I will take my old crank (which I luckily kept), have it ground and balanced and throw in some new bearings. Or hell, maybe I'll just scrap it and build a turbo shortblock and throw it in there with my TBI manifolds until I can get a wiring harness and proper transmission.

Who knows, I have to have plastigauge the bearings first and then I will go from there.