I love the power
mine does have cold start knock (started @ 250 total miles) that had me very angry and afraid at first, I changed the oild @500 hopeing it would help, and then at 1500 went to mobil 1 still no change it comes and goes, no one has ever had any real problems from it it siunds scarry sounds liek the motor is about to throw parts on start but 50,000 later it is still strong as in OX
there are several thearies on why/where CSK comes from but considering I can make it temporarily go away with heavy driving lends credibility to carbon build up on the bottom of the head, some use top end (intake track) cleaners to make it go away but it comes back in a few months, others have said the piston is to samll for the bore/piston skirt is too short until it warms up
it also burns oil my consumption is iregular, it will go for quite a wile without using any and all of the sudden it will need a quart,
it averages out to about 1 quart between changes, suposedly that level of oil burn is about in line with the older BBC's, there is a tsb for replacing the intake bolts aparently some motors the intake will leak internaly drawing oil in and is recomended if the oil consumption is bad, I may give this a try to see if it fixes my oil consumption
only other problems I have had with that motor is the cam sensor died, witch causes 1/2 of the starts to be longer (without cam position PCM has to guess witch stroke the crank is on. 1/2 the time it wil get it right) dealer replaced that one under warrenty, a few weeks ago my crank sensor went out motor will not run without it, cost me $40 to be towed 5 miles home $90 for a new one and was a bear to change, the replacement was a updated hopefully it will be more reliable, I have seen several other people with the same crank sensor problem