Well, here is one recent shot of louie (name of my car.... don't ask why)
[url:frnuhps5]
http://www.ce.rit.edu/~mezz/louie.jpg[/url:frnuhps5]
Of course with the angle and camera you can't see how much it has been lowered. Oh well.
Reliability? No idea! I just got my car a few months ago and all I do is beat the crap out of it on road courses. Seems to handle the beating I hand out without any problems. Nothing has broken yet, only stuff you expect to wear out on a car with ~130k miles on it.
I suggest take the best care of the body you can. That is the only part you can't easily replace. You screw up a shift and blow a hole in your block? Bah, throw another engine in. You don't wash salt off your car and a hole the size of your head rusts in it, yer fudged. (yes, salt.. I am from central NY... snow, lots of icky snow and the salt to melt it)
Currently because my car is burning the oil, I'm just using el-cheapo mobil oil. I don't even remember the weight. I was thinking trying to fix it but with an engine swap on the horizon, why should I bother. The same thing goes for my clutch. It engages way too high for my taste, but being hydrolic there isn't any kind of adjustment. I have a generic OEM clutch system in there now and it grips fine for the amount of power, but I'm not totally sure how much meat is left on it.
Sounds like you are burning lots more oil than I am. I only get puffs when I'm on the autocross course and I floor it. (it is actually a combo of burning and leaking under pressure for me).
Good luck fixing it... perhaps you would like to buy my engine after I rip it out.