Today, dollar for dollar, is the 318 faster than the 340 ???
so when the next young man shows up with his 318 4 door dart, says he wants to build some performance on it and has 2500... maybe 3k to spend on the engine.... is it common sense to advise buying a 340 instead??? Many here offer that advice. My question is would that get him the most performance for his money?? Talking in a 1/4 mile race. Obviously the 360 option is golden here but some still advise the 340. At todays prices, should he pay 1500 for a core 340?? Or should that 1500 buy a set of Promaxx heads for the 318 ??? I love 340's, and have owned a few. But at todays prices, I don't think they fit the bill of a low end budget.
- Or, we could offer up the age old "you can't play until you can pay" advice, which ALWAYS helps the hobby grow... Son, in 10 years of savings, you get to play..... :rolleyes:
Even if this mythical young man shows up with his 4 door 318 Dart, (sounds kind creepy actually) I'd still say forget the 318. The supposed "extra" cost of the "better" (larger) block is worth the expense because it translates into more power.
I'm not sure why the initial question asked us to make a choice between a 318 and a 340, kind of an odd angle. And even though they share the same external dimensions the two blocks could not be more different. IMO it's not a realistic question no matter how hard you squint. No one in their right mind
chooses to build a 318 over a 340 but no one has to do it either because the 360 exists and are still plentiful (more so than the 340) and can still be had relatively cheaply whether in LA or Magnum form.
Here's a real world example. Friend of mine has a '66 Fury with an LA 318 that someone swapped in in place of the Poly. This thing ran like crap and eventually blew a head gasket. He took it somewhere to get it fixed and the shop quoted him something ridiculous not because it's a hard job but because they probably didn't want to deal with his P.O.S. and if they had to they were damn well gonna get paid to do so. I told him if he could get the car to my house we'd fix it.
Couple days later another friend of ours says he had an '80s 318 given to him a while back but he never did anything with it. Only thing it was doing was taking up space and told Fury guy he could have it free. Fury guy went and got it and brought it up to my house with the intention we would do a basic rebuild on it and swap out the hot mess that was in the car.
So he drops the motor off and man is it grubby and no doubt it had been sitting for eons. It turned over but it would had to come apart for sure, thing was super crusty. Now that's all par for the course and what you'd expect from this situation but here's where the money thing comes in. Like our mythical young man here, he had a similar budget of a couple grand to spend on it but of course wanted (had to have) more power. Soooo...
If you intend to make any more power above stock with a 318 you have little choice but to address the shortcomings of the factory architecture. Again, almost all model year 318's were saddled with low compression, pitiful cams and small-valve heads that flowed less air than a squirrel fart. Besides cleaning up whatever block you have at a machine shop, you're into the "build" for pistons + balancing and most likely installing the pistons on the rods and reconditioning the rods as well. That's a big chunk o' your budget right there.
Maybe you get cheap machine work and parts wherever you live but around here hot tank, measure, bore and hone and whatever else is needed is going to be between $800-$1,000 for basic operations and if you're just starting out you're likely not going to be doing this stuff yourself either. We're not even talking cylinder heads or valve train yet, intake, exhaust etc but that $3,000 is done and gone and you're not halfway there.
So me and Fury guy went through this whole discussion over a couple days and it just became more and more obvious that even the free 318 was not worth spending money on because of it's inherent flaws. Was it wise to spend whatever money was needed on the junker in his car to get it running but have the same level of crappy performance? Was it wise to spend his entire budget on the free 318 knowing that because of the budget he would never be able to realistically achieve what he had in his mind for performance? In the end he decided to abandon doing anything with either his current or the free 318 and gave the thing to yet another friend of ours. So that's literally 3 different guys who had the thing in their possession and all chose not to spend any money it even though it was free. Crazy, huh?
This is my opinion but to me it's always worth spending a little more to get a better block because even with a limited budget you will be better off in the end, all things being equal. Torque is king on the street. A mild 360 is capable of 400 ft lbs. of torque in relatively stock form. I don't believe you can make that same claim with a 318.
Engines cost the same to build whether it's a 273, 318, 340 or 360. True, 340 blocks can be pricey because of their scarcity so if you're on a budget then you have to forgo the bling until you can afford it. Again, 360s are still relatively plentiful and cheap. I would almost say that there's going to be less and less demand for 360s in the coming years because there will be way more Gen III Hemis out there. The Gen III is light years ahead of any LA configuration to the point that no one is going to want to bother messing with ancient crap like an LA small block. Maybe things will start looking like 30-40 years ago when you could find 360's laying in the dirt.
