'69 340 Questions

YR; this is not even in the remotest way directed at you, nor to anyone in particular.

AJ's ramblings;
What I like about the 360, for a streeter, cuz that's all I know; is that you can either;
A) put more cam into it before the bottom goes away,or
B) with all other things being equal except the stroke difference; You'll end up with about a 10% stouter bottom-end, which will allow about 10% less stall, or 10% less rear gear. take your pick. And the 360 will yield a tad better hiway fuel economy....... Just try getting 30mpgUS out of a 340 with a 223 cam.
I just bored my 360 out to 4.04, and called it a stroked 340. After that I didn't have to listen to all the car-show jokers tell me I shoulda built a 340: as if everybody and his uncle knows 340s were; " insert your own adjective here". and
C) If you have a manual trans, those extra cubes more than make up for the lack of TM in the TC, so then you can run the same rear gear as the auto. Remember, with street gears, the engine is married to the rear axle and your engine is gonna be spending maybe 90% of it's life under 3500 rpm, which is about 30mph with 3.55s, in 2.66 low gear.............. There is going to be a seriously lotta time that your street engine is stuck at rpms under even 3000 in traffic, or whatever; that's when that extra 10% bottom end is gonna come in handy. Stuck because there is no fluid coupling. Sure you can ride the clutch, but you'll be buying clutches a whole lot more often. And besides, it's the same in second ..... and third...... and fourth.
Say you have an A833 with 3.55s, here are the rpm to mph breakdowns in each gear,from 1500rpm to 3000rpm.
This is 13 to 26 in first, and
17 to 35 in second, and
24 to 48 in third, and
34 to 68 in fourth.
So with an auto,and a 3500TC you will never find yourself in any of these zones.................. But with a stick,You are married to these zones whether you like it or not, and an extra 20/27 cubes is really gonna help make your day. You are gonna need some torque down there to make cruising relaxing. You can only downshift so many times before it gets old.
D) but if you have an automatic with a 3500 TC well, point C) is kindof moot.
But that is no longer apples to apples, cuz if this 340 sucked gas before, well, now it's really gonna. And IMO a streeter that sucks gas that bad is really no longer a streeter, but has become a weekend bomber.
Do the math; $100 thru the week and another $100 on the weekend adds up to $4000 for the summer. You might as well have put a turbo'ed teener in there, and covered all the bases, and paid for the turbo kit out of the cost of the fuel saved in 2 years...... or so, and you could have had soooooo much more fun..

Ok wait, what?
AJ's ramblings.