f**k no waaay
feel your pain guys this seriously sucks! Hope you don't wait months before rebuilding like i did, wanna see this done 
Dan
I know, Stu said he couldn't turn it over by hand, I thought we had checked then when we first got the engine

Going to try again tomorrow, but it would make sense why the starter sounds like its turning over and just gets hot and smokes.
He's getting the spray shop to hurry up and get it done, so we can get it home and strip the engine down and see what's up. I'll be checking the wiring again though, so we can wrap it up and make all the spliced connection clear, labelled and any other loom connections secure, so we can just plug it all back in later and not have to worry about it.