'Jones82TransAM

Hi all. I am hoping that you may be able to guide me in the right direction. I am looking for a suitable replacement for my tired 305. I am looking to put a 383 stroker in. The engines are expensive to the point in NZ where I might as well look into maybe getting one shipped from the States. After toying with the Skip White Stage 2 383 I decided to steer clear after some bad press but please correct me if I have looked into that too much.
I was wondering if anyone had any prior dealings with Prestige Motorsports in North Carolina. I have checked with BBB, and they seem to check out OK. They seem to have some good deals, and if their claims are to be believed, genuinely keen to deliver a quality product. Here is the engine I was thinking of getting. However I will need to do more research to determine if it is compatible with my car. (1982 Trans Am....) If my name wasn't obvious enough :P

http://www.ebay.com/itm/383-Chevy-Crate-Engine-420-HP-Dyno-Tested-Custom-Turn-Key350-400-427-434-454/170723373480?_trksid=p2045573.c100033.m2042&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.RVI%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D21021%26meid%3D6680799281486612363%26pid%3D100033%26prg%3D9336%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D170723373480
Please forgive me if I seem like a noob or ignorant about anything startlingly obvious. I am new to this and would appreciate any info I can get. No matter how much I research things, there seems to be endless ground to cover!

Obviously I would need subframe connectors, maybe brakes and possibly trans or diff?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

1stUC

I'm also looking to buy a crate engine myself. Wish I had the time and knowledge to build one. I've looked at Skip White, Nyes Automotive, Summit and plenty more. Always seems like I find people out there that had bad dealings with all of them. I never heard of Prestige but I'll check them out. I'm looking for a 383 stroker myself. Skip White sure does have some pretty engines and I know he uses alot of Chinese parts but I've heard plenty bad and plenty good so idk

'Jones82TransAM

Thanks for the reply 1st UC.

I have been doing a lot of looking around, and have also seen some of the engines from Summit and ATK to name a couple. It's like you said, the end products seem to be hit and miss, albeit I'm sure more success than failure for the majority of companies. The frustrating thing is paying more money in some of the cases of failure has not always guaranteed a trouble free engine. I guess you pays your money and takes your chances at the end of the day, but being 8,000 miles away would be stroke inducing having to deal with warranty issues not to mention sending it back and so forth. I might have to bite the bullet and take a chance on a local mechanic doing a build, but I imagine I would have to get a lot of parts in from the US to do that anyway!

'Jones82TransAM

here are a couple of links to some videos that made me consider Prestige Motorsports in NC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS-ERtClKEA#t=33

1stUC

Prestige does seem pretty decent. Yeah being that far away and having to deal with warranty if u had to would suck. I'm going to make my final decision within the next couple months on a crate engine. I'll keep you updated if I find any new vendors. I'm pretty much putting my engine in for show. The car will on get about 200 miles a year out on it because I work so much offshore. No racing or anything myself so hopefully that will prolong my engine life. I like Skip Whites because the engines I saw had everything on them I wanted. Just not sure if I'm going to take the risk or not but it looks like where ever we buy we going to take some kind of risk!