ok so over the past few months i have been getting this luv back in to running shape... or so i thought... and after much work i come to find out that has been some hinky wiring... and some other mechanical issues...
well after sorting all of those issues it was time to deal with some of the ease of use aspects of the truck... no to mention i have been having a few issues with the truck running smoothly over the past few weeks and a decline in the fuel mileage (from 32 mpg to friday night i put $38 in the tank and it got me ~120 miles so roughly 12mpg) so this weekend they were running a grand opening sale at the new junk yard in town so i thought this to be a great time to pick up some well needed parts... that and my brother needed a few parts for his car...
so $50 all you can carry... got a distributor off an 86 pup (or what was marked as a pup turned out to be a toy pup will work as a core) carb off a 1.9 85 trooper (its a dcp where as mine was a dch), grabbed a bench seat, a hatch for my brothers justy, some rims for the front, and a few other misc parts for the truck and his justy... got the nearly 200# load across the line and then in to the truck.... started heading home and the truck was missing a sputtering more in the higher revs then it had been below 3000k rpm got home parked the truck unloaded went to start the truck again and nothing crank and crank and after pushing the gas pedal through the floor the engine spun to life blowing a huge cloud of black soot...
so keeping the truck above 3k rpm i managed to get it in to the shop and poped the hood readjusted the points and started tweaking with the carb (to notice that there was an air leak between the upper and middle portion of the carb and that i had no engine rpm chang when adjusting the air/fuel mixture screw so i pulled it off and re torqued all the bolts.. re installed and again this same issue (minus air leak) except the truck would fire with the accelerator half way down instead of all the way down again the exhaust is blowing clear but is sooty as hell. and will not hold steady rpm...
so i know that the head gasket is probably warped and needs to be replaced but with that problem i would be blowing blue (oil) or white (coolant) smoke
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detai ... block-longso then here are my choices i can pull a motor from the junk yard for $140 to use as a core charge on ^ long block from o'rillys
or
i can bust this motor down and send it out to the machine shop and have it ported and polished have the head, or block shaved some how find the crank shaft out of a chevette (or more commonly known as a g161) send the cam in to be re ground, some how find a set of double springs that cah handle the extra force at higher rpm's.... either way im looking @ about 2k and no truck for a few weeks/months
money not being a factor at this point.... beings that i will have to take time off of work to get this stuff taken care of...
which would be the best choice? i can turn a wrench and read a book and pulling this motor and dropping the new one in will not be an issue... just means my hands will be forced to buy some new tools and some where be forced to buy a 5 speed transmission

... thats always a bad thing right
so i guess to say is it worth taking a shot at a motor sold by a "box" store or some how coming up with this Frankenstein motor?