i went with a short block crate engine. then had stock heads and intake done by lloyd elliott. got lucky and found one of the last new factory short blocks around for 1k. also lucky, found some new lt1 heads to send to lloyd. drove the camaro till i had the engine ready to go in. for ignition you can look at the ltcc system, also efi and fast.

 

I am not at all an engine guy but it really sounds as though you are going to need major machining work plus a new crank. With low/no oil pressure you are going to have some serious wear on the mains, probably didnt spin a bearing but it may have been close. Also low oil pressure i would imagine it would cause wear on your cylinder walls. Just my $0.02 but good luck with the project, i want to rebuild an engine one of these days.

 

Using a LS PCM is also a nice choice for ignition. Allows you to completely rid yourself of the opti and use LS style coils, crank, and cam sensors. The only hard part is finding someone to rewire your harness to work with the LS PCM and use your stock gauges. You can buy the harness but it's a good chunk of change.

 

For the price of a 24x conversion you might as well LS1 swap the car. You might get lucky and find a wrecked donor car in your area where you can just swap everything over.

 

Most people that show up here just want their cars fixed or they want the most HP possible for as little money as possible. Sounds like you are here for the experience, which is great.
I would strongly suggest three things.

One: Find a good machine shop that does not mind working with you. There are some machine shops that will have little patience for a first timer, They are just going to ask what you want and offer little or nothing in terms of advice. If you find a good shop buy your engine parts there. It will not be as cheap but you won't have finger pointing with a internet site. It will be the best 10-15% extra you ever spent.

Two: Assume nothing. Measure and clean everything. I has seen so many first time builds screwed because a person assumed the machine shop gave them the right parts or that the label on the box is right so the part must be right. I never use plastic gage as my only measurement but I always double check everything with it. A compression test is a bad way to find out you .03 over cylinder has .01 over rings in it. I have seen at least three times guys assumed their just reground crank was clean on the inside only to have the grit from the grind process destroy a brand new motor.

Three: Do a Build thread in real time post progress and any questions.

You are going to want to budget $4000 for the rebuild/valve job/new cam and rockers. Hopefully you can come in under but you will not know for sure until after tear down and inspection.

Another thing to think about. If you found a low miles LT` and rebuilt that you could save yourself some money. I bought a 93 LT1 with 32K on it for $1000. Rebuilding that would be simple ring, bearing timing chain and gaskets. With a new cam you would be about 2K-2500 for everything.