I think it all depends on how much you want to do yourself and how much you want to "farm" out. When I rebuilt my 1.8 back in 1998 I took the head to a machine shop and had them totally rebuild it. That cost a couple hundred bucks. I also took the block to a machine shop and they dipped it, honed the cylinders and put new freeze plugs in. That wasn't too bad, maybe a hundred bucks. I ordered all the gaskets, pistons and rings from JC Whitney. Also I got a new main bearings, water pump, fuel pump, carb, timing chain, and the list goes on. It was recommended to me that I get the crankshaft balanced also, but that I did not do. Putting it all back together was not hard, the Luv engine is quite light and all it took was a buddy and I, without a cherry picker to put the block back in the truck and then I built it up from there. Getting it to run was a interesting experience, I forgot to line up the distributor when it was removed and put back in, and finding the correct advance was a bear. Once all that was done, weeks I might add, it did run like a champ. So in the long run, I would say it was more expensive for me to do it this way, than it would have been buying a remanufactured short or long block and going from there. The skill level to do this rebuild isn't that high, maybe 5 outa 10. As long as you are competent at reading directions (Haynes) and take it slow, you can get it done. Oh, I guess you wanted $ amounts. My rebuild cost over 2k for me to do it, could have had a reman long block for I believe 1500 back then. Thats everything but the carb, water pump, intake, and exhaust manifold. But the experience I got doing it was a blast, and when I drove it around I could say "Yeah, I rebuilt it" Hope some of this drivel helped. RF
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