Welcome to the community, Ted, sorry to hear about the engine issues. Sad to say, as soon as I read you have a Flex, the first thing that popped into my mind was to warn you about that ... Most are lost through lost compression, a few through cracked blocks. I would definitely upgrade the internals on the new block if budget-able, piston rings, rods & all. But only Livernois has deck plated to date that I am aware of. That is a really solid upgrade.