I don't get the "marathon build" aspect, what's the point of that? Nobody (especially someone new to the hobby) throws together an engine in half a day unless there's some extreme reason. When the build was first announced by UTG that part immediately had me confused.
I didn't watch the videos on this build (yet, haven't had much interest) but I followed along pretty closely to the "Bottle Rocket" 318 build. He flattened I think 2 cams, both from Comp with their cheap lifters, and instead of just getting better parts and keeping it a budget build he dumped a grand-plus into it for a roller cam and retrofit lifters. I wasn't too impressed by the way he handled that, it's like he hadn't built a Mopar engine in 20 years and was under the assumption that aftermarket parts are still the same as back then. However to his credit in the last video of him driving Bottle Rocket it sounded and looked to be running damn good.
He also seems to have done a great job with his budget daily driver 360 build. He took his time on that one and made a lot of videos detailing the finer points of a budget build like cleanliness and careful inspection of used parts to be re-used. This marathon build kind of undid a lot of that. Would have only taken him a couple extra hours to clean the parts before putting them together?
