75/76 Dodge Dart /6 average MPG and improvements

Thanks for the tips. Almost everything youve listed in on my to do list, with some urgency or another.

First and foremost, transmissions. Unless it needs work, I dont really think its worth touching till it goes. When it does start to go, Id like to stick something with an OD in, simply for the fact that I do a lot of highway driving in my spare time. Id go so far as to say 75 percent of my driving is highway. Could expand a little on the issue with OD or do you know anything worth reading on the matter?

Good ignition components and everything else you mentioned could be done to reduce parasitic loss are definately things I plan to do early on, if only for the fact that, for the better part, I think I could slip them one at a time into any longer maintenance session. In addition that, a 2 barrel carb is something I plan to tackle soon into it all too. Speaking of which, How would one mount a 2 barrel on anyway? Assuming the engine I get has a 1 barrel carb, I suppose Id need some sort of adapter, right? And Ive always been kind of curious, do you or anyone know what kind of benefits I can get from a 2 barrel swap? I understand one stands to gain some HP and MPG with that operation, but Id be really curious to know how much, I mean, if its another one of those cold-air-intake-gets-ya-1-extra-HP-and-a-quarter-mpg type situations.

The one thing I doubt Il be doing is machining work. But in place of that, I plan to eventually cobble a turbo together, which in its self is another reason not to increase compression, from what Ive read. If Im correct, a higher compression engine is less friendly with turbos than low compression, no? In any event, I only say turbo because Ive read from a few sources that gentle driving with a turbo set up at anything between 4 - 6 psi can actually net a noticable increase in fuel economy, and higher increases can yield nice increases in HP. A win-win, if the cost of turboing the engine isnt too bad, which I have read can be done successfully on the cheap with junk yard parts if need be. I suppose this ties into one more thing, headers are mentioned too. Headers are one thing I might do for the hell of it, but if I were to go the turbo route at some point, should I be factoring that into my choice of headers? I havent exactly done a ton of research on either aspect, much less how they correlate, much much less headers themselves but from what I have read, I get a feeling they correlate real good.

Thanks for the response. :)