OK, you can do a lot that will help your sanity, and some to help the budget also.
First up is to clean everything
before dismantling. Do this sensibly, to avoid masses of water in sensitive areas.
Then document with sketches/pictures, stuff like sender positions, vacuum lines, distributor "clocking", colour schemes...
Next provide yourself with a good strong, dry workspace for rough work, and an equal one for clean work. You'll need both at once.
Acquire satisfactory storage for parts - waxed card boxes, plastic lidded crates, zip-lock bags - and shelves to put all these things on.
Now you can pull the motor down and clean all the parts initially. You can also final clean/detail/paint all the ancillaries (brackets, pumps, alternator, valve cover, thermo housing etc etc).
If you have access to small electronic scales and a retort stand (or similar) you can balance and polish your rods. Resizing is not likely to mess this up, and the machine shop can arrange shotpeening afterwards. The block operations are really best left to the machine shop, but a mockup needs to be done without rings. This tells deck height, so you can then have it zero decked.
The final clean of the block, including all galleries, can be done by yourself. Installing new block plugs and cam bearings would be next. You can also assemble the crank, testing all clearances as you go, fit the piston/rod assemblies after gapping your own rings, install and dial in the cam.
Some of these above operations will require you to borrow or buy tools. You can also do light porting to the head and check it's CC. The machine shop should be instructed on what final chamber volume to achieve.
Fionl assembly and installation is pretty easy because you (a) took notes earlier, and (b) cleaned and restored all the bolt-on parts at the beginning.
Cheers, Adam.
