the good, bad, and the ugly...
so, the rear main seal appeared to be leaking... along with the oil pan. In order to replace the oil pan gasket, i had to pull the motor... so out came the gas tank, drive shaft, trans, clutch flywheel, exhaust manifold, down pipe, turbo, upper intake, drain the coolant, drain the oil... sucks but not so bad yet.
So the motor is on the stand, and I take the pan off. ~~~... there is trash all in the bottom of the pan. so i pull the rear main cap off and see the bearing is not real happy. it only has 10 mins of run time on it (if that). so i check another main and it is simliar, but not as bad. pull three rod caps and they are similar to not as bad. one was perfect. and yeah, the crap in the pan was metal, it stuck to the magnetic plugs. The bearing wear appears to mostly be the coating, nothing that your fingernail would catch on... but im not sure that matters.
Anyways... here i sit, beer in hand, contemplating what to do... Part of me wants to send it. The other part of me wants to send it to the machine shop. either way its $350 worth of seals, bearings and gaskets in the trash. The risk is trashing the turbo, is about the same price... a little more. i suspect that for 1K i could straighten out what i got. for 2k i could straighten out an add some forged rods and pistons. and for 3k i could build a forged 408/427.
the dilemma as i see it is that 1k is still a stock rebuild junkyard motor, 2k is still a 351 when it doesnt cost that much more to build a 408/427, and 3k needs 2k worth of heads and cam (nobody in their right mind would put an e7 on a 408).
rods and pistons is probably the way to go, in order to reach 700whp. but it will still take a set of heads to get there. so why not 408???