A safe red line is going to depend on how your engine is built. In my 428SCJ which is bored .065 and balanced and blue printed, the horsepower tops out at 6300 RPM. Also it has a solid cam that is rather radical but not as bad as the one that I had taken out. I set my red line at 6,000.
As for the
oil drip, it is an FE motor and I have owned ever size Ford made from the 332 up and have never had one that didn't drip
oil. This one does too, and it is a small drip, so I just slide a piece of paste board under that spot. I have had the engines out and everything else in the past and couldn't stop a minor drip. So I quit worrying about it around 7 years ago and as long as it doesn't get worse I won't worry about it. If it gets bad enough that it starts to show up on the dipstick as losing
oil, then I may try to find it.
Ron
