So I faced the awful death of my engine due to a miss-shift, completely tore up pistons, valves, etc. so I need a new engine. It's at a shop with a great reputation but the cost is incredibly high.
The cost for a remanufactured engine with a 3-year warranty is $4200 and labor $1200 to install it and take out the old one. So around $5800 overall with tax. The engine would take 5 days to get here. Am I wrong for wanting to go this route, or is there a much cheaper route for engine replacement with a warranty like i'm being offered?
Thanks guys.

Oh yeah, it's a 2002 AP1 F20C engine.

 

If it were me, I'd buy a new engine from Honda, and buy a used head.

The trouble with rebuilt blocks for our cars is the frm cylinder lining. If they rebuild by sleeving the block, you lose that lining and with it much of what allows our engines to go 300k plus miles and still have good compression and good performance. If you don't care about that sort of engine longevity (and there are many reasons you might not), then a sleeved block is fine.

If they don't sleeve the block, how much of that cylinder coating was left on the block they rebuilt? No way for you to know, so you could be getting everything else brand new and nice, only to have issues prematurely (compared to a new block) once you get a lot of miles on it. End result is again, not the legendary 300k plus mile potential.

Hence my reasoning, new Honda block, which is everything you need except head. Maybe your head is even rebuildable, so you wouldn't have to buy that.

A new Honda motor is surprisingly affordable (like $3k and change).

If it were me, I'd rent an engine host and engine stand, and do the motor swap myself. You could have a trusted machine shop install the rebuilt head on the new motor, but do the actual swap yourself.

That is where I'd try to save, on the swap, not on the inside of the motor. Less chance of dping something wrong that will scrap all your new parts.

A motor swap on our cars is not as bad as many others.