Johnkom, I went junkyard on everything. My local you-pick-parts sells all their engines for $250. If you do not want to spend half a day or more pulling the engine you can use the national car-part database for finding a 5.8L Ford. These were used on 80's trucks, vans, suvs, up to 1996. 1994 to 1996 with roller cams (F4TE block), 1994 may just have roller cam provisions. The junkyard engine I picked up still had the cross-hatching in the cylinders and read well within the requirements on bore size through entire length on all cylinders.
All of the stock heads are garbage on the 5.8L, but your 233 heads are not. Also, the GT40P heads are an easy junkyard find and were used up to 1997 on many 5.0L (mercury mountaineer for example). These are often for sale on CL for very cheap because the auto guys find that the spark plug location does not work with their manifolds or headers. For your log manifolds the GT40P heads actually make spark plugs easier to access.
Given the depth of my rebuild I probably would have went with a 350 chevy set up due to flexibility with Alpha 1 and availability of parts and cost. If all is good except the engine, I would follow the route I went with 5.8L. My Arabian thread has some of these details and I would be happy to provide more if needed.
