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Hey, hey, hey Scot, I know what you mean in that you want to tie your own shoes. Most of the fun is designing your dream engine and designing it yourself, but the down side is that it is easy to make a mistake or two that will cause severe problems on startup after a substantial investment. I would say Tech1 is a little on the conservative side BUT he really knows his stuff as you would realize if you had looked at his past (very helpful) responses. Since you are nearer the west coast, shipping from PAW is much less for you than for folks on the east coast so I suggest you take a look at the many optional engine builds in the PAW catalog and order up one you like and then have the fun of the experience of the fun and tension of knowing that how you assemble the engine might be just right or might just destroy the engine the first time you start it up. Were it not for the shipping I would have preferred the PAW 383 which comes already with the clearance taken care of for the stroker crank. I get it, you could afford a top of the line crate motor (see the add at the top of the Forum page) but you want to say you built it yourself. I think the best compromise would be to get a PAW kit motor and accept the responsibility for the assembly yourself. As it is I am biting my nails every step assembling my 350 starting from a locally built short block BECAUSE I have built several other engines and found that small mistakes had an effect on the result. Item 1: a small pinhole leak in an aftermarket intake burned the valves on a VW rebuild. Item 2: using stock lifters with a aftermarket cam led to rapid wear of the lifters in a VW. Item 3: chopping the flywheel on a MG midget led to rapid wear of the clutch since the machinist shaved the face of the flywheel as well as the circumference. I could go on and on with personal mistakes that seemed to be "little" but had negative affects later on, so if you want to assemble the engine yourself, give yourself a break and buy an engine kit from PAW AND take heed of free advice from folks on the Forum who have vast experience if you ask them the right way. Since I am new to the SBC 350 I have learned a lot from this Forum and in fact many things that I didn't know I didn't know. On the other hand you can read every word of the Chilton's manual ten times!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder