Tom,
Mine is certainly not a race engine - though it was balanced, blueprinted, ported, and dyno'd. Of course, mine uses Webers rather than injection. I'm not quite sure, but in our discussions, I thought Dave mentioned that mine was a "small valve" head it came off an Escort). I don't know if there were two versions of the head or opening up the valves was part of the preparation for the race motors. You might know more of the particulars about that.
I elected to use a cast crank. Dave offered a steel one to me for an additional $500 but I declined. Who would do a stupid thing like that? Well, it was 10% of the cost of the engine and Dave said it would only give me 1000 rpm. I don't think it was a race crank because I knew Atlantic drivers who twisted their motors to 9500. Dave said to keep the redline at 7500 and I thought that was plenty for a street engine. As for the price, keep in mind all this happened thirty five years ago!
Jennings has (or had) been building great motors for a long time, but my buddies who raced Atlantic generally used Grimaldi. Eight hours doesn't seem like much, but at almost 11000 rpm, I guess that's to be expected.
I'm using an NG-3 gearbox and Richard's twin link rear suspension with his rear disc brake kit.