After about 2 months (give or take a few weeks), I finally got my engine from Motors by Gosh. There was some apparent miscommunication over the few months between scheduling to drop this off and getting to the work. I originally was going to disassemble the engine completely but didn't have all of the necessary tools. I was also between driving truck at night and becoming a co2 laser technician (whole story there in itself). Between John and his worker(s) there must've been a few things lost in "translation". lol
Sometime in November I got a call saying they didn't realize I was bringing them a shortblock and that they don't normally disassemble things before work. With John totaling his race car down south and getting a little banged up work was backed up for them. So after close to a month at his shop waiting they kicked it back another three weeks. I arranged pick-up for the block/crank and got the rest on the 7th. So that weekend a buddy brought a nice electric ring file up and we went to work. We sorta' just decided on .022" for top ring gap and .047" lower. About a .005" change on the top ring and .002-003" on the lower.
The block and head got the works: bored/honed with torque plate, resurfaced and grove for fire rings (block and head), rebuilt head with Industrial Injection 150lbs springs, rotating assembly balanced and the crank got polished. Really all that is left is to measure everything, do a final cleaning and throw it together. As far as I know the only parts left are main and rod bearings. Possible a rear main seal.