An old dirt track racer I knew used to rebuild stockish engines for local folks. He would set the oil pan and trans on some old tires and fire them up to break them in right there in the floor.
Same way the junk yards did back in the day.
Would have manifolds and the short pieces of heads pipes cut off with a fire wrench.
Even if smoked and rattled some on start up thet would say something like, purrs like a kitten. If ya have a problem just come back in 30 day's.
One place was known to sell almost anything that fired up.and ran that did not knock.
just like i did back in my yard ownership days [1972-1984/5] if the engine/transmission unit wasn't in the car.
we sold stuff cheap, not to keep. the old "5 days, 500 feet" guarantee............it was just about 600 feet from the yard to the main road.
seriously though, if a problem developed in a reasonable amount of time, even if it was an unknown item, we would work through any difficulties that would arise as we figured a good word was worth a thousand bucks !
remember, this was before the interwebs were even considered. we were also one of the, if maybe the only, "pick your own part" yards in existence at the time.
