When I graduated from high school, a friend had a 64 GTO convertible that he bought with a bad engine. All of us had almost no money, so here is what he did to get an engine for his 64.
Another guy had bought a 67 SS Chevelle that someone had put a 66 GTO engine in it, but never finished the swap. He of course wanted a chevy BB in it so the GTO engine was yanked out, tossed in a ditch, and sat there from late summer, until next spring. He asks about the discarded GTO engine, and the guy told him if he wanted it, come , and get it, no charge.
He took that engine apart, and it was full of mud, but the bearings were all still intact. The cylinders were rusty, but the pistons weren't stuck in the bores. He sandpapered the cylinders, where they were rusted, and painstakingly cleaned everything in a bucket of kerosene, bought a gasket set, and put it back together, put it in the GTO and fired it. He did find a used hydraulic cam and lifters that was better than stock for next to nothing that went in it.
No one in our group of friends expected much from this lo buck effort, but it actually ran well, and didn't burn oil. He wrecked the GTO, and took the engine out and put it in a 63 tempest coupe, that he removed the transaxle from, and put the GTO rear axle and transmission in. I lost track of what happened to that 389 after he put it in the Tempest, but he sure got a lot of use from an engine that he paid nothing for........
Same guy used to have a 62 Belair 4 door W/ a 283, that somewhere he got a set of double hump SBC heads, and didn't have enough money for head gaskets. So he re used the gaskets and covered them in Permatex aviation cement. That didn't work out for him.....LOL.
Being in the auto repair business for over 50 years I've seen some really sketchy lo buck repairs. Some they got away with, some didn't.......
