So my headaches start again and the frustration is once again upon me. I think I may just have to bite the bullet and rebuild my 318.
There are a lot of things that should be considered, before sending a heap of cash to a machine shop, to have them go through the engine.
It seems to me that you have three problems-
-You need an engine that will perform well, should you spend money on it
-You don't want an "ugly" engine under the hood of your Scamp that has a new coat of paint on it
-You don't want to spend a lot of money.
First off, a gasket kit for your engine is cheap. You can clean up anything that you end up with and paint it, with a little elbow grease and some cheap engine paint, after it's been assembled on an engine stand.
A couple of scrapers, flathead screwdriver, some deep, wire brushes and some laquer thinner with a good pair of neoprene gloves will get the engine clean. Valve covers and oil pans can be cleaned very easily by hand with some paint stripper and 320 paper, if you don't want to spend any cash on new ones, sandblast them or have them dipped.
What these engine builders are telling you is how much labor they will be putting into your engine with machining, on top of parts with a modest upcharge, along with assembly work.
I guess my question for you is; how much are you willing to do, yourself?
I restore cars for a living. I've been through extremely low milage, numbers matching engines that I wouldn't dare touch with machine work and I've seen complete basket cases from things like the broken crank engine mentioned above, to a 6 pack 440 engine for the original car that was so rotten in the water jacket, that they needed epoxy repaired to keep from leaking near freeze plug openings, near casting numbers and fixed them, all the way down to the engines that I have in storage that are simply good enough to put back together with new seals.
The truth is, the more you do, the more money you are going to save. The work I've done on my girlfriend's Scamp, our shop would have charged somewhere in the neighborhood of $30K to do. I've got about 1/8 th of that into parts and materials, along with my time.
A 318 outperforming a 360 is speculative. Can it? Yes. Will it? It depends on what kind of engine you are comparing it to. I have seen junkyard 360 engines, stock J heads with a good cam, good torque converter and carb outperform 440 cars, because they knew what they were doing.
I guess what I'm trying to tell you, is that just because you skip on costly machine and assembly work, doesn't mean you can't have a nice engine in your Scamp.
This is a pic of the engine bay in my girlfriend's Scamp-
The engine hasn't been out of the bay since it was in Detroit.
I'm in the process of doing a head, intake and carb swap, soon. Right now, I'm getting the parts prepped mechanically and cosmetically, but I won't pull this engine until the rings no longer seal.
The reason being, I see no point in a cruiser/ driver with mild performance to waste a good cylinder wall, waste money and waste time for something that gets it done without any work at all. This engine did smoke on deceleration when I bought it, nice and ugly, but a cheap set of valve stem seals that replaced the chunks of seals left in the springs cleaned that up, no problem.
If you went and looked at that 360 that is two hours away, you can always enquire about it's history. If someone knows the mileage, they likely know why it was pulled or what happened to the vehicle/ where the engine came from. If you can crank the engine and listen for compression, it cycles ok and they know some history on the engine, The price on that 89 is a very good start for an engine, for the same money as what the machine shops want to build your 318, would kick it's *** up and down the street all day long, if you put the money into good parts instead of assembly and machine work.
Again, though, it all depends on how much of this you want to take on, yourself.
