I went to a local machine shop/builder in West Chester, Pa to ask about my wiped-cam 396. He suggested a complete tear-down and eval. If I bring the engine to him, he will charge 250.00 for the eval. Does this seem a little expensive?

BTW - he doens't use comp cams anymore b/c he also had too many wipe-outs!

Would the evaluation include the teardown of the engine (power steering, alt., water pump, intake, etc...) and maybe the removal of the radiator and grill plus reassembly? Or is the engine out of the car? If it's still in the car 250 bucks would be a very fair price even for just the disassembly. If the engine is out of the car, remove the cam yourself along with push rods, lifters.

Yes, $250 if I bring the engine to him out of the car.

Well Vince, most shops today are charging around $60.00 per hour for labor. That's about 4 hours of labor. I can see a complete teardown and inspection taking around 4 hours. You could disassemble the motor yourself and maybe save an hour of labor??? See if he will cut you a break on the eval if you agree to have him do the machine work??