I am about ready to pull my engine out and take it apart. I have most of the stuff I need eccept for the bottom end. Here's my problem what to do with the lower end. If it is in good shape I may just put in rings and bearings. However I have given thoughts to boring .030 over. If I do so do I have to have everything rebalanced? If there is anything wrong with the crank I may go to a forged one. What costs do you think I will run into to boil the block , bore it .030 over , and install cam bearings. At what point is it necessary to rebalance everything? I hope to run the engine 5500 max. (it is a 1989 5.7 in a GTA)

 

When you bore out a block, you're going to be putting larger pistons in it. Larger pistons even .030 larger diameter will be slightly heavier. Whenever you change the weight of internal parts it's always best to have everything rebalanced. For a street engine chances are you would never really notice any difference but just how much are you investing in the new engine? I'd like them to stay together for a while.

Hot tanking a block is about $50. Boring is around $10/hole.

When I had my engine done here's what they did to the block.

Removed all frost and gallery plugs, hot tanked, surfaced the block (decked), line honed, bored and honed with torque plates, resized the rods, r&r pistons, pin fit pistons, install cam bearings and all plugs. $689 just for that labour.

I bought some new heads at the same time and the final cost to get the long block out of the machine shop was $5000. I then took it home and finished assembling it. When they built the long block I supplied a bunch of parts. Cam, pistons, timing chain, pushrods, rockers, lifters etc. That wasn't part of the machine shop bill. Add on the tin, oil pump, intake, carb, distributor, water pump, mounting brackets etc and it starts to really add up.

I've done a stock rebuild on a 350. New rings, bearings and seals, RV cam etc and it still cost close to $500 for the parts with no machine work. I did all the tear down and assembly. No performance parts at all. Didn't even do a valve job. Still used the stock cast pistons. Ran it for 6 years before finally selling the truck.