I've not done an engine rebuild before so no tooling or resources for that outside of this site. I have wanted to do it though just to conquer the fear of messing something up, you know... just taking my time to do it right. But I am a little worried about overspending based on what I might find. Might be the ostrich move to just slap things together and hope it runs which could bite me in the end if the engine has problems.
Agree that the spool mounts are superior - definitely have time on the schumacher return policy to make the call and spend that cash elsewhere..
The steering box is another question because I have the opportunity to swap in power steering but I haven't really had a problem with the manual steering. I know if I end up selling it to someone who hates manual steering one day that's their problem... but they'd probably hate the manual brakes it has too.
Overall:
Budget > Prioritized Job List > Personal Ideals
That's my decision tree.