I have a bone stock '05 with an automatic, I had a roller bearing go bad in one of the lifters and cause some surface damage on one of the cam lobes. I decided to take the opportunity to do an upgrade instead of repair back to factory and already had my discussion about a cam.

Now I'm wondering what I should do to the motor while I'm torn down this far since the motor has 97k+ miles. Called a local machine shop and they had several suggestions for the motor (oddly enough recommended skipping the one thing I was asking about). I think it's just about a complete rebuild cause I don't know what else or how much more there is they could do.

1. suggested vatting motor to clean particulates from lobe/lifter
2. hone cylinders and replace piston rings due to mileage
3. replace cam bearings (he said not replacing bearings with a new cam was the number 1 thing that always bit him in the ***...)
4. hone rods, check crush and clearing on rod and crank bearings
5. change main bolts to ARP bolts

I just called to ask about balancing the rotating assembly since I accidentally rubbed of my alignment mark when I pulled my harmonic balancer (which he said didn't matter and if I was going back in with the same rotating assembly then a balance wasn't worth it).

any of this sound like he's trying to sell work I don't need? anything you might suggest I take care of while I have the motor out? Yes, I know I didn't need to pull the motor to swap the cam but I'm doing other "restoration" type work and tearing the car down pretty far anyway. That makes pulling the motor an inconsequential extra bit of work and there might be other/easier ways to do it, but I may also end up swapping the torque converter, and pulling the motor to make room to pull the torque tube seems easier at the moment than dropping the rear. Most importantly though, if I can do a little extra work to get a lot of extra life right now then I'd like to do it, this is a daily driver, no tracks, drags, sprints, just a lead foot at stoplights.

 

Cam bearings should actually be OK at that mileage, along with the rest of the short block.
Put in new lifters, new cam, oil pump, cam retainer plate, timing chain (they stretch) and clean out the oil pan and pickup tube.
Put a SacCity billet barbell in.
Button it up and send it.

 

New harmonic balancer. Get the heads ported if you are doing the cam. 243 heads pick up a lot with a good cnc program.