I have a couple going on right now. One is for me, kind of an experiment you might say. But it could easily be a twin to other builds I've had success with. CP doesnt like hypereutectic pistons for his. I think other than that difference, our builds are similar. Pay a good shop what it costs to get good work done, and get everything that a performance buildup entails done. I'll post in the builds section what I've done in the past. For here, I'll tell you the main difference between the builds is piston design, butt hat change brings additional labor for the desired result. My goals are run on 89-91 unledaded (that means 10% ethanol in CT), iron open chamber heads, static ratio of 10.8:1, and power outputs in the 500+hp@5800 and 500+tq@3500. A nice, solid buildup with good real world uses. My experiment is the use of quench dome KB pistons to get 10.8:1 with a set of 452 casting heads. Fitting the domes and making sure things are "right" are crutial to getting detonation resistance with those pistons. Hence the "experiment..lol. I do plan to put it on an engine dyno as time allows, but being it's for me..It gets done last..lol. I do have a 440 listed over there already, with iron closed chambers and pump gas that make sthe torque, but is a little shy of the hp I want. I would caution you, $5K is a decent number, but you want to be careful as to what you choose to do. The trick is the desired result, wihtout paying too much..lol. Not paying for stuff that may not help, or not paying for something that does. Most of my builds when you look at what you need to make a complete running engine, are higher than $5K. Anyone can build a long block for that. But a long block needs another bunch of parts to fire up.