mejia11, if you are capable of assembling an engine you have the option of picking up a small block Chevy long block core from a Chevy or GMC truck dealer for their standard core charge of $100. A local dealer let me pull the pans off the cores he had to see what they were. I found a 4-bolt 350 unit with a crankshaft and rods in perfect condition and cylinders still on the standard bore. Racers tell me that a "seasoned" block that has been through thousands of heating and cooling cycles is actually preferable to a new block becaused the used block is totally dimensionally stabilized whereas a new block may deform ever so slightly as it ages.
Next I bought a set of rod and main bearings and .020 oversize (the smallest oversize available to preserve cylinder wall thickness) hypereutectic pistons from an online seller and took the block, rotating assembly, bearings and pistons to a machinme shop. The machine shop hot tanked and bored the block, honed it with a torque plate and hung the new pistons on the rods that came with the core and balanced the rotating assembly.
Next was finding rings, a Cloyes true roller timing set, Crane camshaft and lifters, roller tip rocker arms, pushrods and a new harmonic balancer to avoid any leaks at the front seal from online sellers.
Finally I bought a new set of Edelbrock heads with small ports suitable for street use because it is so expensive to put used heads into truly like new condition (new valves, bronze guide liners, 3-angle valve job, springs, retainers, locks, seals) that new heads are actually more cost effective and come with very nicely and uniformly blended bowls and finished ports.
Doing all of the above allowed me to select components suitable for my purpose and check all parts during asembly, something that is simply not done by the minimum wage grease monkeys that assemble "crate engines". Also, selecting your own parts enables you to use quality parts where doing so is cost effective. An example is the true roller timing set. It costs 4 times as much as the $20 timing sets used in the crate engines but will not be all stretched out like the cheapy almost immediately, retarding the camshaft and killing low RPM torque.
The result of this is a street rod that will smoke the tires if my grandkids want a burnout ride yet get nearly 21 MPG on the highway with a 2004R trans, a smaller version of the 700R4 you will be using.
If you look in the Summit Racing catalog you will see what a "crate engine" with quality components costs. You would pay a fraction of that assembling your own.
