Haven't heard anything about aluminum block availability, AFAIK it's still ok but sometimes I am the last to find out about such things.

They've vendor ship direct, not stocked in a depot, so the order has to be placed for the part to be tracked down.

If somebody orders one and waits an excessive amount of time to get it, I can look into it and more than likely find out what the deal is. Until then I have to assume everything's cool....It would not really be fair for me to bug the machine shop asking about rumors.