Since I found the crack in my current 283 block, I've been looking around for a replacement. A cheap replacement that I could just drop in and run. Found a few non-running 350s, but nothing I wanted to spend money on. Last night I was cruising Craigslist and found something I couldn't resist: A 20,000-mile rebuilt 283 with 4 bbl carb and aluminum intake, all for $300.
Went and looked at it this morning. Nice and clean, bored .030 over, and complete. The guy pulled it out of his hot rod (very nice) because the plugs were getting fouled with oil. He got a good deal on a crate 350 from Summit and swapped it out.
I couldn't walk away from this. So now, I have a broken-in rebuilt running 283 to drop in to my engine bay. Just gonna swap over a few things and I should be good to go. Not too worried about the oil fouling, but open to suggestions on a fix. I'm so excited.
PS: Ignore the "350" stickers on the valve covers. PO just swapped his aluminum finned covers to his new 350, and threw the crate motor covers on this engine.