Barry <barrysuperhawk@insightbb.com> wrote:
: I would say that by the time you get it all togeather right, for a couple
: of dollars more you coulda had a crate motor. Seriously, I would make it a
: 100% economic decision. If you can afford the crate motor, then donate the
: 360 to Tom for christine, and go for it. Having rebuilt 3 LA 360's in my
: time, [including one twice] I have had zero luck with that being the "cheap
: way to go. Either go with a crate motor or just patch togeather what you
: have as required... YMMV.
The crate motors though are in the mid $3K range. I have never rebuilt
a complete motor, but I would be surprised if it really took $3K to do
it on the 360! I asked the MML once what the cost would be for a big block
rebuild and IIRC, it seemed to come in around the $1000-1500 range,
unless you go crazy with it.
Another aspect - those "in the know" highly recommend not using the
crate motors as-is. It should be torn down and rebuilt. Apparently, the
quality control on these is not all that it should be, and there are many
instances of these things dying early deaths due to improper assembly.
This would no doubt add some additional expense to the cost of the motor.
A way around that would be to purchase a non-MP crate motor from some place
like Muscle Motors (I'm not sure who the players are in this field, you'd
have to do some research.) However, those crate motors would no doubt
cost even more than the MP engines.
One nice thing about the crate motor route though, is it does open
up other avenues besides the 360... Like a 500 inch wedge, perhaps? :-)
(Probably not cost effective in this case though.)
One possible route is to find a relatively low miles 318 or 360
Magnum, and swap out the intake manifold for a 4bbl version.
Oh, one other option would be to check out some of the
remanufactured engines which are available from places like Jasper,
etc. I think you can even order them through parts stores like
Autozone. I have no idea what the quality of these motors are,
though I would suspect most come with a short warranty.
--
-Jon-
.-- Jon Steiger ---- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com --.
| 1970 Barracuda - 1990 Dakota 'vert - 1992 Ram 4x4 - 1996 Dakota |
| 1996 Intruder 1400 - 1996 Kolb FireFly - 2001 Ram QC 3500 CTD |
`------------------------------------ http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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