I had the Challenger in a 4th of July parade, ran real good, nice and cool. On the way home, I heard a light tapping noise coming from the engine; sounded like she was running a little low on oil, so I put in a quart. usually that'll take care of the noise. Not this time, though. Got her home without incident, had my buddy check it out while I was gone on vacation, sounded like rod knock to him. Took out the oil filter, brought it to the engine builder - turns out the oil filter internals basically collapsed, and released a bunch of crap back into the engine, according to the builder. The p*sser is that I just had the engine rebuilt last September, only has 1500 miles on it. Now I have to tear the engine back out ( and just when I finally had it running so sweet), take it back to the builder ( who fortunately will warranty anything that needs to be done to it ), and go through the whole damn process again. The filter ? Was Fram Superguard (?), something like that, anyway. That was the only part that the engine builder didn't put on, so I can't blame him for what happened. Like I say, I feel fortunate that he's warrantying everything, even though by rights he wouldn't need to. Anyway, my advice to all of you is to stay away from the Fram filters, and invest in something a little more heavy-duty, something that'll stand up to the high pressure oil pumps these big blocks like. I decided to go with the K & N oil filter - that appears to be seriously heavy duty. A bit pricey, but so what. I do not want to go through this crap again, believe me. But now I've got 3 weeks of not driving the Challenger, and summer's just starting to slip away. Sorry for the long post here, but I had to get this off my chest. Okay, I've vented, but I feel a little better now. Will keep you posted.
