Selling complete motor - assembled or not?

I have a complete, fresh, blown alcohol BBC that I'll be putting up for sale as a "turn-key" motor soon. However, I'm undecided as to what stage of completion to have it at, when I advertise it.

Option 1 would be to fully assemble the motor, fire it up on the engine run stand, and record a video of the whole thing, to send to potential buyers to view.

Option 2 would be to assemble the long block, but leave the blower and fuel system off.

Option 3 would be to assemble the short block, and cylinder heads, but leave the heads off the motor.

Option 4 would be to assemble nothing, and have all of the parts available for any potential buyer to inspect

Obviously there are pros and cons to each. If Option 1, a buyer can literally see and hear it run. Murphy's law says that they're going to want to disassemble the motor and inspect/measure things. Understandable, but if they don't buy it, then I"m stuck with a disassembled motor.

Options 2/3 would be more for if I'm going to part out the motor.

Option 4 would be good for a buyer to inspect everything, but if they insist on "hearing it run", they'll be SOL.


Thoughts from anyone who has gone through this process? I've bought a lot of race parts online, but never a complete motor, only components.



Thanks
Chris

 

I've sold 2 complete engines. People will want specs and clearances. Write a detailed sheet and go from there. If someone is serious and know what there looking at then they'll want it apart for good measure but if your spec sheet is sound they'll be happy just knowing that you have documented it that well. Both times they were tickled with how much info I had.

 

Excellent info, thanks Jay!

 

Just me, but I like the idea of Option #4. A knowing person should be able to look at what is there, and them determine for his/her self whether what's there makes sense and is suitable for their use. Also allows them to change out and to mix/match components if there is some small area they disagree with. This would be better than incurring the expense of assembly and dyno testing, just to have prospective buyer quibble over some small potential or unknown detail. On the other hand, if your engine is a class specific deal, and you know it works 100%, and if you can sell to a racer who competes in a similar class, then assemble/test/document for sure. Just my thoughts.....