Now that I have a head rebuilt and ready to go I decided it's time to come up with a bottom end to bolt it to. As mentioned previously the plan is to use an AAN bottom end with Scat rods to bolt the 7A head to. The longblock came delivered to the house on a pallet and looked to be in pretty decent shape with under 100k on it and probably could have just been swapped in as is, but I wanted to go through it putting rings, bearings, rods, and ARP hardware in.
The AAN as it was delivered to the house.


After pressure washing and attached to an engine stand ready to tear down.


Another reason for using the 7A head. I hate trying to get exhaust studs that have broken off flush, out of the head.


After pressure washing I pulled the engine down to just the block which looked to be in good shape. There was rust on the outside, but the inside showed very little wear with no ring ridge at all. After cleaning all the rust and crap off of the block with a needle chipper, pressure washing again with added attention to the oil galleys and prepping the block with a rust converter, it was time to roll outside and paint.


Back inside ready to start assembly.


I'm happy with how the internals looked and with the cleaned up block as a starting point. I now needed to get the rotating assembly with the Scat rods balanced.