During the teardown, things went well. The junky oil cooler is history. And all other accessories are off and shelved for the duration.

Once the pan was removed, I found something that I did not want to see:

...the transfer pipe O ring was almost blown out at the block. If that O ring gets blown out, there will be NO oil pressure in the engine. The square O ring shown is "almost" to the blown out point. Fortunately, it had not made it there yet. The crankshaft journal surfaces, and the bearing surfaces did not show any signs of lack of oil.

This WILL be corrected. The fact that it occurred got me to thinking about some possible needed enhancements to the oiling system. More on that as I get into the piston cooling aspect of the L block.

UPDATE: I have added a subgallery on the lubrication system; showing the things I found and did to improve the flow of oil.

Besides the oil pump transfer pipe problem, I was disappointed to see the amount of cylinder wear/belling that was there on a motor that only had 106,000 miles. The desire was to go with the ET pistons; but the belling and bore wear bothered me. For a hundred and six thou, things should not have been so worn.

As I analyzed the situation, The things that I planned to do for improvement...getting rid of the crappy oil to coolant oil cooler and the even crappier electric cooling fan arrangement...became more than just personal preferences. The bore wear was an unpleasant indicator of excessive heat that was not properly and timely disposed of. I determined to SURE AS HELL NOT REPEAT those errors.

The one other item that was definitely going into the recylcle heap was the 92C thermostat. Hell would freeze over 40 miles thick before I would install one. The 87C thermostat is almost too warm; but tolerable. The 82C thermostat that is available is too cold, for this use. For a higher level of performance than planned for this vehicle, or for a warmer climate, I would use the 82C from the git-go.