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i'm looking to buy a stock bare ls1 block, no damage, i dont need crank or anything else, i threw a rod in my '01 and put a whole through the block. I'd perfer a 01-02 block, but i'll consider a 98-00 one. Let me know a price, and where you are located. I'm in NJ but i'll drive a reasonable distance to pick up.
Hey, just a little note on this because I went throught the same thing. LS1's came out in '97 in the vettes and '98 for the Camaro/FBird. I ended up buying a book on LS1/6 building so that I could decode a block I was going to buy. (Actually I found a guy with 2 GM longblocks that were warranty motors). He wanted $500 a piece and I decided to buy them both and was paying them off. After the first $600 I picked out the newest longblock by looking at date codes on the water pumps and other parts. One was a '97 (early blocks had internal oil leaks due to bad casting or whatever) so I picked the other one which didn't have the normal '00 stamp on the front like the one out of my car did but a bunch of parts on the motor had a stamp date sometime in 2000. After i had it, I decoded the block and it was an LS6... confusion... the head casting were a 241 used on an LS1... a little more reading and I found that some lucky late model year 2000 Camaros and 'Birds got the LS6 block with all LS1 parts in it.
Let me tell you the worries of buying a warranty block like I did... I had no clue why the motor was replaced by the dealer, it could have been just a piston knock when cold (like most GMs do) all the way up to a bad internal oil leak or cracked block. I took my block to a repitable machine shop and had them look it over and test it as they deemed necessary... which lucky enough, he saw nothing wrong with it which lead to the belief that the motor was replaced due to piston knock and the customer complaining enough that GM replaced it.
CHEVY DEALERS DO SELL WARANTY BLOCKS!!!... believe it or not. I checked a few places and one or two had some but then someone told me about his friend having 2 that was selling them for a friend... shady b/c it sounds like the typical "fell off the back of a truck" but I was never screwed. What probably happened was a tech at a dealer got ahold of the blocks that had already been paid for by warranty and were awaiting field destroy or selling... they usually dont want them back due to shipping costs. Early '97 LS1's were replaced quite a bit as whole motors and they wanted those back to do more R&D as to what was going wrong so you're less likely to run into one of those as a "waranty" motor.
Point being... try to inspect what you're going to buy... I spent hours visually inspecting both (never bought the second '97 LS1) and it paid off for me. There are people out there on ebay who will tell you nothing is wrong with something when they actually have no clue. The guy I dealt with was 10 miles away and was straight forward and told me he had no idea and I could look them over as much as I wanted. Oh, both blocks still had hash marks from honing and almost no sign of piston wear on the walls, meaning they weren't high mileage at all.
Hope this helps you some