Check out Texas Speed and Performance if you want to buy a pre-assembled forged shortblock. I believe they have forged 347s for around $2,500. There was a post on Corvetteforum that listed a lot of the companys that made forged shortblocks, what they included, displacement, and the price. I believe Texas speed had the cheapest. All of them had pretty high quality parts they were using as well. This was $2,500 with no core charge, I believe. I'll look around and see if I can dig up that thread.