Engine Rebuilder

I took my engine apart myself, brought the block to a machine shop and had it hot tanked, overbored 30, and then align honed for the crank, all for about $300. Then I bought a crank-kit from PAW that included the crankshaft, rods, bearings, pistons, cam, timing chain, and a few other odds n ends (gasket kit, oil pump, etc) for like $650. I got to choose the pistons (I got forged flat top for 10:1 ratio), I got to specify which cam (I picked their SSI cam with 260 intake / 270 exhaust, .448 lift intake and .472 lift exhaust), then put it all together with some ARP bolts and studs. So all in all I did the bottom end for about $1000. I spent another $500 on the heads, having bigger valves put in, new rocker arms and springs, seals, etc. So this was $1500 doing most of the work myself. Kind of makes me wonder how they can do a good job for $1200????

The ONLY mass-rebuilt engines worth buying are Recon and Jasper. With Jasper, all of their engines are pretty good and have a decent warranty. With Recon, they've got four basic engine packages (at least when buying through Advance Auto Parts) available, with the Xtreme being the best (I've got one of those under the hood of one of my fox-body daily driver now.... .040 over block, forged pistons, moly rings, and .010 under crank, assembled, broken-in, and dyno tested (238.9hp and 302.1ft/lbs) for $1800 with exchange. Has a 3 year unlimited mileage warranty. Only problem I've had with it is an oil leak from the fuel pump block off plate on the timing cover, and I had to change out the stamped-steel valvcovers they shipped it with for my aluminum ones. Runs like a bat outta hell, and survived overheating to 260 degrees when my cooling fan went out in heavy traffic when it was 105 outside.