Aw heck no....the slop in your connecting rod through gland is enough for me to "send er' back"
This is what they told Mirko years ago about his Challenger
I have the Challenger and i have the same "problem" on the gland.
The reply from mamod years ago is, the piston gland is a "floating gland".
Not sure what that means.
" floating glad" = we're ok with 4-6 thousands slop.
I got turned off of this model after reading a similar report from Jim about this years ago.
I had this same setup in a Mamod Sp #7 (I believe) poor runner and weak, took a lot of massaging from me to get it to run just "ok"