Subzilla,
Yes, I bought one of his new 6.5 NA engines. The guy's name is Jim Henry and he's in Albemarle, in Stanly county. Spent a lot of time with him and the engine before I bought it. We hooked it up and started it. He's been in the surplus business for 25 yrs., and has been burnt on selling these engines before and is very careful to check them out. The military puts all the new engines it buys on a dyno right out of the shipping can, and runs them. He says that he's had some engines that the guys doing the dyno run didn't purge the air out of the cooling sys. properly, and the head gets hotspots and cracks. He always pulls the heads now and sends them to a shop for checkout. We left the water manifold off with the block full and there were no bubbles. He gives a 30 day warranty on the engines. If the thing doesn't come apart on me, he's saving me quite a bit of money. I'm going to have it installed when I get back home in Sept., and I'll let you know how it turned out after some mileage.