[JLMounce]

I don't know if I'd really get hung up on the junkyard motor deal. While yes there are some gems out there where you can find such a deal as a 6.0 LQ4 motor with a 4L80e and everything is good and koshur. Most of these junk yard motors are there for a reason though. The low mileage stuff that comes from a brand new vehicle that was crashed, is gobbled up by the salvage yards and sold to used engine resellers etc.

What is left in the local yard is you average 150-200K van motor that had 2 oil changes in 7 years. There's some people that would certainly just throw that engine in their car and hope for the best, but most people will end up having to go through that engine. All your savings is out the window at that point.

As a result it's not really a fair comparison to compare a freshly built Pontiac to a junkyard motor. Instead do the math and see what that junkyard motor is going to take to get right as well as the pontiac you have in the corner.

What you'll likely find on the budgetary side of things is the "It depends" situation. It depends on what your goals are. It depends on what you currently have and don't have,

When I was in need of making changes because I had an engine that wouldn't run on pump gas, I looked seriously at doing an LS swap. I already had an engine that was put together and in good running order, except for a set of heads and a cam setup that didn't allow the engine to work as a street car. My goal was around 500hp and reliable. In my situation, it was cheaper to do the heads and cam on my pontiac than to swap in an LS to make the same power.

If you don't have an engine on hand and you need one, the delta shifts in favor or the LS engine. Especially if you need just a basic rebuild with maybe a hotter cam. As the HP goal rises, I've found that the budgets needed start to converge again up to about 600-700hp where the Pontiac block starts to become a liability. This pushes the delta again towards the LS as the factory block can handle much more power. As your power goal starts exceeding 4 figures, up to about 1200-1500 when you're talking about an aftermarket LS block, again the budgetary issue starts to merge between the two.

My point is that the issue is far more complex than just saying, junkyard LS and profit. Each person's situation is going to be different and what route they take should be made based on their personal goals for the project.