Hello everyone. I am in the middle of this dilemma right now and I wanted to hear your thoughts and ideas on it.
I have a 75 Dart Sport with a 318 in it. My initial plan was just to rebuild it. But in January I acquired a 400/727 combo and now I’m kinda torn on what I should do.
For the 318 build I was considering around 9.5 compression, edelbrock heads, flat top pistons and going for quench, not going ham on camshaft selection, etc. Also, I have in my possession several intakes to choose from for a small block build. I even have an old edelbrock dual quad one if I wanted to turn the cool factor up as well. My car already has headers which I would re-use. Logistically this build would be very simple.
On the other hand, for the 400 I would be needing to buy quite a few stuff before I even get to start spending on the engine itself. I would need headers, a new distributor, and the appropriate oil pan just to get it in my car. It came with a 2bbl, so I would need to get a 4bbl manifold for it. This eats into my budget so if I were to follow this route, I would keep the factory heads and do some porting on them. Valve guides are good so no need to do a full recondition on them. However, I would have 2.14 valves installed since the 2.08s are sunken from a previous rebuild. And on pistons, I’d be using the crappy cast ones. This means a compression ratio around 8:1 after milling the heads. And yes, I would need to buy new pistons since the block has to be bored.
I did some math and I would spend approximately the same on either of these two builds. My car is a regular driver, and I’m putting in a trac loc 8.25 rear end with 3.21 gears.
What are your thoughts? “Max effort daily driver” 318 or should I let my inner teenager take over and swap in a low compression big block?
