Hmmmm, great minds think alike Drew

, I got your block and head out yesterday, caustic washed them, and sent your block off for boring.
When I took your and Ray's engine in, I did so in a time I had my biggest jobload rush in my shop's history, I took in like 12 engines in less than a month, all the engines leading up to your and Rays have been nightmares, bad blocks, bad cranks, etc.,etc., each little setback can easily cost a week or two as you get the needed cores to replace the bad ones, and with a 12 engine backlog, it doesn't take long to get a month or two behind halfway thru the run, but the good news is it's your and Ray's time now. So hopefully I'll start to post progress report on you two's engine builds here now.
The first report on your block, was man was it rusty on the inside, I took it outside to remove the freeze plugs and blow out the block water passages with air, I think I covered the entire block with a orange cloud

Thee good news is that the block is not any worse for wear from what I can tell and that's what a caustic wash is for, to get all that crap out of there. I'm guessing the last person who had this engine running had a water leak, and just kept adding water to the system, never good idea, this can make for a nightmare in a running engine, it almost imposible to completely flush out all the corrosion, but in the case of a rebuild this can be taken care of, this caustic wash was just the first one, I'll will do again after boring and other machine work is done, then do a final hot water and cleaner wash before assembly starts.