Hey, title sums it up nicely, but after patching up my 3.0 with a head gasket job it turns out to have lost the bottom end as well. Im assuming piston slap since its got a loud knock on cold starts, sorta quiets as it warms up, and doesnt knock on deceleration or letting off throttle. This car was heavily neglected before I bought it so it was really a matter of time before this happened.

I'm not sure of the metal shaving content in the oil but it is very clearly present so Ideally I would be able to find a suitable long block to just drop into this however locating an available 3.0 short/long block seems near impossible without core return which I don't have time for. Worst case scenario I find just a short block, clean up my original heads as much as humanly possible and hope for the best. I can call up a few junkyards to see about finding a bottom end but I am not confident they'll have good condition 3.0 blocks since these all seem to be overheated or blown lol.

For everyone who's about to scream 3.4 swap, I love that idea and also believe this would be a perfect application for that but the cost of that is not in the cards. I simply don't have the funding for that unless by some miracle I find a running 5vze truck to donor everything from for free. Currently I have the 3.0 with an a340h automatic behind it so that financially complicates things further.

Im located in NorCal so if anyone knows of a good way to find a 3.0 short/longblock please pm or drop that info here.