I know this is somewhat of an old post but I’m gonna talk about my experience. I was in the same boat. Blew my Evo 8 motor and the block and crank were trashed. I saw the Airtrek engines on eBay and researched for several days before I decided to go ahead and buy one. $1600 shipped for a complete running 50k mile engine compared to $1500-2000 for a bare block and head. I thought what the hell!! Stripped it down to the bare long block. The differences in the short block that I can tell are a different oil pan, pick up tube, no oil squirters and you have to use an Outlander water pump. The head itself is the same other than the valve springs and cams. I swapped those out for kiggly springs and Kelford 272s. Swapped my old water neck housing, intake and exhaust manifolds, oil pick up tube, oil pan and went ahead and did balance shaft delete. Everything else was pretty straight forward other than the Evo water pump not working. Bought the Outlander 2.4 pump and good to go. I’m running a Holset 60mm HX40 with pump 93 and meth spray, 29psi and making 540whp on the bone stock Airtrek bottom end on a pretty conservative tune. I’ve had it in there for about 18 months and around 7-8k miles now with no issues. I kinda wish I had went ahead and did a full build on it so I could push it on up to 700-800hp but I’m pretty dang happy with it as is.