273 Numbers Matching car. Should I rebuild or swap engine?

toolmanmike said

You can build them to be peppy but we have found there is really no magic bullet to make the 2 barrels a bunch better. More compression is needed along with a 4 barrel and a dual plane intake, headers and a free flowing exhaust. The camshaft is the tricky part. The 273's are easy to over cam and then you loose all your bottom end. Then you need a stall convertor and rear gears to make up for it.

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I did replace the rear end. It now has a '70 Duster 8 3/4 rear end and a ''69 Charger 3:96 Chunk. I had to replace the rear end to move up to 15" tires... so I beefed up the rear to handle whatever route I took. The car is not going to stay 100% original as we swapped to 15" tires, updated brakes, added sway bars because it had HORRIBLE body roll.... but we thought keeping the engine and transmission numbers matching would be good should we ever decide to resell.... but maybe it's not a big deal? But like 273 said, maybe I will just rebuild it, put a little bigger cam in it, put on a 4 barrel carb and that should give her a little more Pep".