SHO Shop is in Huntingdon Beach, California (near LA). They charged me $255 to ship their block to Philadelphia (including the extra charge for the freight company to deliver with a liftgate equipped truck).
Being a customer of SHO Shop for their 3.0 block, I say that you can do better by buying a new (or cheaper yet, used) 3.0 block and having somebody trustworthy (Terry for instance) modify it the way it needs to be. Not worth the premium for the minimal amount of work needed (all of which was not done to my block by the way). Not to mention that they were extremely unhelpful with any questions I ran into doing the job. Vadim was very helpful if you could get him on the phone, but the guy who normally answers the phone acted like I was a bother to him, and gave me completely wrong answers to my questions at times. I don't recommend them to tell the truth. Their "complete gasket set" I was promised was 3.0 head gaskets and valve cover gaskets (which are useless with 2.5 heads). They sent me the wrong head bolts (3.0 pushrod), costing me 3 days. One to convince them they screwed up, one for them to get the right set, one to UPS Red them to me. And I had to follow up weeks after I returned my core TB to get my refund.
SP Motorsports (well, really Pro Tech Automotive) NO QUOTED doing the 3.0 for me. Told me that "it was not worth their effort to get into extensive engine modifications on a Contour." So my money (which is as green as everyone else's) went to a local shop who made a nice profit working on my car (at a fair price for someone who's never disassembled a Duratech). From what I hear, the guy that owns Pro Tech dislikes Contours and everything about them (just what I've heard). Joe at SP is totally cool, don't get me wrong. But they use Pro Tech as their shop (again, my understanding of the situation).
Just my advice from someone who's been there.
