I have no dog in this fight, but I thought this required some comment. Restorers do look for cores, all the time, decent cores, which are getting harder and harder to find. We do this for instances where a persons component is pitted or borderline unrestorable. Those instances where the time it would take to get it to acceptable standards outweighs the cost of the restoration. However, we don't, or I don't, willy nilly substitute my good inventory for a bad core. You can't stay in business doing that. I try to explain to my customers that I can't just substitute my good core components to put out a great motor for them and keep the crappy pitted stuff for my next customer, that's unfair. If I give my good core components which I've spent my time and money to find to everyone that has cores that are extremely pitted what do I end up with? Crappy unrestorable inventory. I'll offer it as a substitute at a reasonable price and more often than not I'm glad to have it on my shelves for an instance like a motor that's been in a fire where there's nothing left to restore and I don't have to send my customer hunting the internet or forums or bone yards for another core. But I do have to ask that customer to cover my cost of the core. My time spent attempting to locate and obtain cores is my living. As much as I hate to say it, the old addage "time is money", is truth.

You simply would not believe what comes through a restoration shop as a core someone wants restored. I have cores I can't get into, cores that the screws break off when you attempt to remove them, ruins a housing when that happens and now who replaces that housing? I sometimes spend several hours total attempting to break down a core to save it for my customer. That's several hours I could've been doing something far more productive. It throws a restorer off a time line, puts them behind on their other work and eats up precious time and materials.

I've seen Jerry's work for years and believe me, what was posted here is NOT his "norm". He's probably one of the most anal people I know on his components. That being said, I try not to judge someone's restoration career on one component I've seen posted. We all have off days and we all have those instances where a person is insistent that their pitted core comes back like the day it was new. We're restorers, not miracle workers. While that particular core could've looked better and I wasn't privvy to the communication between the OP and Jerry prior to or after that particular restoration, perhaps there was a miscommunication between the two and "acceptable standards" is a relative term. To one it means one thing, to another it means something else. It appears photos of the finished motor were sent via email. Was there nothing said about the condition prior to shipping? I'm asking because I don't know.

Moral of the post? Don't expect your restorer to replace the crap core you picked up on ebay that someone said was restorable with their good core components without question and without reimbursement for their time and effort. That's just not realistic.