Another thing to consider is convenience. I don't know what kind of schedule you are on, but when I was a college and grad student mine allowed little time for finding or rebuilding engines. It may be worth paying a little extra to have someone do this for you while you hit the books...assuming college students still do that sort of thing. Hope you end up with a good running truck. Good luck.

 

$2,500 is $2,500. Some guys charge less, and they should.

What are you looking for in this rebuild? Lowest price? Quality? You can't have both.

 

To rebuild the whole engine yourself, it depends on the quality that you want to do to the rebuild. With a manual you can yes do the basic rebuilt but thats about it, the is change the piston rings tear the motor down and then build it back up. Depending on the engine you might have to fix any bad valves. If you have warped heads a machine shop would have to do that, or you would have to buy new heads. If you do a complete, you are probably expecting to have to do the cylinder walls and if they are too bad, you would have to bore the engine at least .10 over to resurface the walls. If you have the time, money, and tools then you can do it yourself. Good luck with whatever decision you make.

 

Gwall, that's exactly what I'm doing. And yes, we still hit the books. I'm currently taking 17 hours, plus I am working. I have little time. The question that started this post was if 2500 was reasonable, not that I wanted a cheaper price. I'm all about quality, and this guy does good work. And my rebuild is the complete kind, new everything, its actually in the machine shop right now, and am expecting it to be finishes on wed. I will definitly post pics and all that good stuff later on.
I'm even going to try and get over there when the put it all back together, so I can take a few good pics, and maybe learn a little while I'm at it...
Thanks for all the replys guys!

 

adamjth23,
I think you made a good decision with having your block rebuilt by a local mechanic. That way you know exactly what you are getting and a mechanic to stand behind his work. Once my 302 goes on me (hopefully not for another 70k) and if i dont have time to tear into it, then ill have my local mechanic rebuild it.

 

I've paid to have reman engines installed, I've installed junkyard engines, and I've rebuilt engines myself. I let "present circumstances" determine the best path to take, usually based on available time.

For example, if the current engine can be "revived" by replacing some of the gaskets (head gaskets in particular) or possibly throwing in some bearings and whatnot, generally I'll do that work and build a new engine on the workbench as I have time. If the engine had a bent/broken rod, cracked piston tops, bent crank, then the need for an engine is more immediate and I'll swap in either a running junkyard engine (with new gaskets of course while it's not in the truck/car) or if I'm really crunched for time, I'll go the reman route and have someone install it.

At the moment my crewcab has a little over 380K, so I'm sure you can appreciate my saying my engine is on it's last legs. Because I'm building a new, radically different engine for this truck, I didn't want to be bothered swapping out the 351W for another one, just to do the swap again 2 months later to the new engine/tranny combination. So with the engine in the truck, I replaced two valve seals, one head gasket, both valve cover gaskets, dropped the oil pan and removed two rods, and pushed those pistons up out of the block and gave them new rings.

Total monkey-class hack job violating the rules of common sense, but the engine runs well enough that my truck is still my daily driver. Of course I didn't finish the new powertrain so my monkey-class hack job has been as-is for almost a year now - unfortunately.

See, right in the middle of building the new engine, just after the monkey-class hack job on the old engine, my wife and I had our first child so my priorities had to be shifted from "hobby engine rebuilder" to "father". So... needless to say my 500cid twin turbocharged stroker isn't finished yet