73 Dart Sport Reanimation
Well on to the engine and trans. When I started this project my original goal was to get it running and drive it and work on it as I go. The 318 ran but the trans lealeaked fluid as fast as you could pour it in. After pulling the trans and finding a broken converter snout and buggered front pump I discovered the thrust bearing was bad in the engine. I dont know which occured first but the engine had to come out. At this point I really didn't want a 318 but after several months of of searching for a 360 core at a reasonable cost I figured I would just run the 318 till something better came along. The block was in good shape only having .003 taper so I honed it to straighten out the bores and loosen it up a bit in anticipation of running a bit of nitrous. I ended up with .004 piston clearance with the stock cast piston. For a cam shaft I went with a Comp 268 hydraulic grind. On the heads I spent about 40 hours working on the ports. I used stock replacement 318 ex valve and 1.88 intakes. I opened up the throats to 88 percent of valve dia. And lowered and profiled the guide bosses, opened up the push rod pinch as much as I dared. I also unshrouded the larger intakes trying to preserve compression as much as possible.I milled the heads .060 and also milled the intake faces instead of the intake manifold in case I wanted to try other manifolds. I flowed heads in stock form and after all my work on a friends super flow 600 bench. I was not real excited with the results and sort of left with my tail between legs. 211 CFM at 450 lift and it sort stalls out after that. Most of my head porting experience has been with Chevys and I am certainly a novice porter. I see lots of head porting info on this subject in the small block section of the site and some of it seems a bit contentious so I figure I wouldn't stick my nose in it. I simply wanted to see what I could do on the cheap. More to come later but I gotta get to work.
Well on to the engine and trans. When I started this project my original goal was to get it running and drive it and work on it as I go. The 318 ran but the trans lealeaked fluid as fast as you could pour it in. After pulling the trans and finding a broken converter snout and buggered front pump I discovered the thrust bearing was bad in the engine. I dont know which occured first but the engine had to come out. At this point I really didn't want a 318 but after several months of of searching for a 360 core at a reasonable cost I figured I would just run the 318 till something better came along. The block was in good shape only having .003 taper so I honed it to straighten out the bores and loosen it up a bit in anticipation of running a bit of nitrous. I ended up with .004 piston clearance with the stock cast piston. For a cam shaft I went with a Comp 268 hydraulic grind. On the heads I spent about 40 hours working on the ports. I used stock replacement 318 ex valve and 1.88 intakes. I opened up the throats to 88 percent of valve dia. And lowered and profiled the guide bosses, opened up the push rod pinch as much as I dared. I also unshrouded the larger intakes trying to preserve compression as much as possible.I milled the heads .060 and also milled the intake faces instead of the intake manifold in case I wanted to try other manifolds. I flowed heads in stock form and after all my work on a friends super flow 600 bench. I was not real excited with the results and sort of left with my tail between legs. 211 CFM at 450 lift and it sort stalls out after that. Most of my head porting experience has been with Chevys and I am certainly a novice porter. I see lots of head porting info on this subject in the small block section of the site and some of it seems a bit contentious so I figure I wouldn't stick my nose in it. I simply wanted to see what I could do on the cheap. More to come later but I gotta get to work.
