318 performance question

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sniekamp

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I have a stock 318 in my dart right now and im wondering what are some things I can do to make my car a little faster without pulling the engine and boring it out and putting a new cam in it. I was thinking maybe a new intake and 4 barrel carb would help some? And im planning on putting headers and new exhaust on eventually. But if you have any ideas or advise on what Im doing or can do please let me know!
 
intake, carb and exhaust will help. Ignition side as well, electronic with an orange box or msd. Stock cam will limit you. Intake, look for something with smaller runners, Edelbrock sp2p-318, dual plane. Carb...vacuum secondary. 600 or less. although 600 may be a little big.
 
exhaust...get rid of your old pipe and muffler and put duel pipes and performans mufflers go with 2.50 pipes for room for later upgrades,that will free up some power and sound good to.
 
Agreed.

4 barrel intake and 600 cfm carb (it'll be just fine, maybe a little tuning), dual exhaust (2.5" will be plenty big enough), headers would be an improvement but not absolutely necessary. Since your car is a '74 it should already have an electronic ignition set up, but it wouldn't hurt to put in a performance module to replace the stock one, mopar's "orange" ignition module works well, "chrome" would be good as well.

Since you just bought it, make sure you do a thorough tune up before you get going. Plugs, wires, cap, rotor, air filter, fuel filter, change the oil, set the timing, check the vacuum levels on a gauge etc. You'll want to know that everything was running tip-top before you make any changes, so if you have any issues after your upgrades you can attribute them to the upgrade and not a pre-existing problem. Nothing worse than having to check 3 things at the same time, or have issues tuning a new carb because the ignition isn't right or the fuel filter is plugged etc.

I run the "stock" (rebuilt by a previous owner) 318 in my Challenger with an Edelbrock streetmaster 318 intake (small intake runners to match the 318 ports), 600cfm Carter AFB, Pertronix electronic ignition, and headers with dual 2.5" exhaust. For what I assume is an otherwise fairly stock engine, it runs well and is a lot of fun even in the heavy Challenger.
 
heads. its all in the heads. (mostly) i do agree with everyone else, however. if ya have the cash throw a set of RHS heads prepped by Brian @ IMM or MRL performance. i love my RHS heads.
 
Crane Energizer, .454 .454 [email protected] Good street cam, however, they've gotten quite expensive for a street cam....10yrs ago they're only $130 w/lifters, think they're over $200 now. Good cam for a 318 though.
Good combo with the Edelbrock and 600.
I think Summit has the same grind for way less.
 
cam, intake, carb, headers. Makes a huge difference on a stock 318. still not going to pull a wheelie though!

I put some bolt ons onto my stock 1973 318. I put a LD4B intake on it, 600 cfm carb, headers, 340 cam, orange box and lightweight distributor springs. It got up and went pretty damn good. Left a lot of newer cars in the dust. I had a stock 904, stock converter and 3.23 gears. would have got up and went even better with a converter and better gears.

Just make sure you have a good motor before spending all your time adding parts to it. a compression test would not hurt to do.
 
carb ,intake,headers,msd ign.,......imalso have a eddy streetmaster 318 intake for sale and other sb parts cam,carb also..hit menup if interested
 
Dual exhaust, then 4v, then gears. 3.23 or 3.55 would be nice and streetable. Actually, gears might be the first thing you should change depending on how pathetic the gears you have now are. My duster has 2.45s uggghh
 
I pulled the heads on mine and opened up the intake ports considerably. I raised the roof of the ports, opened the pushrod pinch, profiled the guide boss and bowl blend. I have a performer 318/360 intake port matched to the heads and a '74 440 thermoquad. The cam is a mopar performance .450 lift 260 duration. The bottom end is all stock low compression '83 318 out of a stick shift van. No fancy exhaust just stock A-body 318 exhaust manifolds and 2" dual exhaust. Stock electronic ignition. Way faster than it was stock. You are not going to get that much more power without changing the cam. Also the stock timing chains have nylon toothed cam gears that are not very accurate and tend to wear the teeth off and jump time. Definitely worth replacing
 
The formula for power is Flow + compression. Heads, Cam and 4bbl. the more air you can get in and the more you can compress it, the more power you will make. Throw in better exhaust to get all of that flow out. better ignition components to make things go boom better.
 
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