I wasaway from the 2.6 for 15+ plus years while doing the military thing, and i picked up this Raider that a kid had been driving 50+ plus miles each way to Jacksonville without overdrive, and have not had any problems with the engine itself. We used to race the G54B, running Weber DCOE on custom manifolds, lots oof compression and RPM's, never had problems. Like everyone has said, we always used new head bolts and Mitsubishi head gaskets, and the worked well. I like mine a lot, it is just underpowered with the 35's on it. I know when I did my 350 swap into my S-10, it was so much more fun to drive. this is a really great platform to build on, maybe a good think thru on rebuilding your 2.6 completely might not be a bad thing.