A turn key 350 at Summit is $5070.00 shipped. If you don't want to participate in the rebuild and you don't care about nostalgia then maybe a crate engine with warranty is easy and safe. There are lower priced, less complete engines $1500 and up. Lot of risk in rebuilding, even a trusted guy someone tells you about can screw it up and then you have to take it back out and fight for him to fix. Summit or other GM crate supplier, no problem 99% of the time. So check your goals and your wallet and how much you can do yourself. You are not confused, this is a hard decision to make in your case. You can do a lot of the work, but having the original block tested and assembled by a pro and have the original heads tested and assembled by a pro would be a way to go also.
