Stock 1979 360 with Speedmaster head question

I often long for the days when we pulled old piston rings out of the trash to go on the used piston that came out of a 100,000 mile pickup engine that blew up ten years ago.

Then we would use Permatex on the old head gasket, find the best used rod bearing you could find, bolt it together, and run the local dirt track with the same junkyard dog motor for the next 8 weeks.

My first trip to Bonneville was in '79 and I paid for my place sleeping on the motel floor by washing blown up SBC parts in the motel bathtub. Then watched the junk motor get an A/SR past the 140 mph mark on the salt.

Today's new racers would have new parts air freighted over night and likely never go that fast with new parts.