Honestly for 700, just fawking boost the LQ9. She'll take it.

Put a turbo cam in, if you're feeling real frisky, but otherwise put a turbo on that girl and let her hit

 

Same here, I don't know why everyone wants a built motor, I just did top end and a few minor tweaks and my 5.3 is still happy after 30k of solid DD abuse, 15k at the current power level...

But if your going to build one you will need to know if it's NA or boosted so you can adjust compression and cam selection to best suit your goal.

 

fist im never the lucky one to put a engine straight from the junkyard and have it run good lol, i built mine mostly since i swapped to 6.0's that are high miles (pick them up cheap around here) and the claimed "low mile" engines for what they are asking a few bucks more i can have a fresh rebuild with some upgrades (helps me sleep better at night) now if i had a newer truck with low miles good chance i would do the same as you did leave the lower end alone, my current truck is a 4.8 with 130k not a chance in hell im going to h/c/i to it for a n/a truck and still be less HP/TQ then a 6.0 with less mods

oh! and i can put the vortecMAX badges!!! not to many badges for the 4.8's out there

 

Truth be told: all my built motors started life as used POSs

the LY6 turned 408 had rust in her, stuck valves and #7 got hot and grabbed the wall. I had every intention of makin 6-700 on her without ever opening her up

the JDM MR2 motor showed up and it had been dropped. After some "this and that" it turned into a stock rod/piston built motor. Studded, MLS, balanced to the moon, valve springs and cams: etc

so, I can see where the OP is coming from I guess. I've been there and lived it. But if I popped the heads off the LQ9 and liked what I saw, no way I would tear it down. Some ARP head bolts and some OE MLS gaskets and I'd feed that girl the 16lbs she wants

 

I see yalls point, my 5.3 was at 40k when I picked up the truck. I thought the higher mile motors did well with boost bc they were loose enough to take it?