Today, dollar for dollar, is the 318 faster than the 340 ???

RustyRatRod said

Not if it's done correctly it won't change a thing. The correct procedure is to knock a little off the main caps where they meet the block, then assemble and torque them to spec in place. Then set it up on the bar and BARELY clean the block side up while taking the most material out of the caps. Doing it this way will change nothing concerning the timing chain. I've even seen shops lightly spray paint the crank saddles in the block so they can remove the absolute minimum from the block side. If the shop refuses to do it that way, find a new one.

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I have seen a 440 block that a machinist's straight edge rocked on #3 saddle. Yes they did spray paint the saddles and bored to just wiping the paint off. But when done the timing chain was sloppy. It went into a motorhome. It was not one of my builds, I had no pony in that show. The motorhome owner demanded they just put it together as is. Shop foreman said no and Owner took it somewhere else. #3 bearing was thru the copper and on the steel before align bore/hone. Crank did clean up at 0.040" but still showed shadow marks.
I would have scraped the whole engine. It had been over heated so many times.

The foreman said he thought #3 was the only one that was true deck height. That block had major core shift well before all the overheat cycles that warped other stuff out of spec.

I was a US ARMY SP4 and worked part time at this NAPA machine shop @ $0.95 an hour. My job was to knock down the long blocks, box and tag everything. I had to straight edge most surfaces and chart them. Just about everything on this engine was red tagged.