340 Opportunity

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68AusCUDA

68AusCUDA

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Hi all, need some advice. I have an opportunity to pick up a 340 for my 68 Fish. 340s are really rare in Australia. I've read a lot but Im a novice.

My car is a cruiser not a racer. How cruisable do you think the following combo would be? Could it be easily retuned if I wanted to?

340 E55 rare engine block A331D.....
3.58 stroke crank, reworked 340 rods
KB hyperutectic pistons 12.1 comp
Crane Cams F248 solid cam [email protected]@50ex
108 lobe separation
Ported trick mansweto J Heads, Crane gold 1.6 rockers and shafts,Mopar performance blk wrinkle rocker covers, Ross balancer, Edelbock victor 340 ported intake, carb shop stg 3 750cfm carburettor with spacer,1 3/4 custom 4 into 1s with 3 inch collector, ceramic coated suit rack and pinion steering, Hi energy race sump, external oil lines and filter, new water pump, dizzy to suit msd unit.
All pulleys, alternater ,belt etc...
Has done couple thousand street km's, runs and cruisers perfect .Tuff little street engines goes extremely well!
Just been dynod and has 468 hp @ 448 ftlbs on bp98.
 
Replace the rockers with 1.5 ratios and you might be there
If not, drop in a milder cam

Are you stick or auto?

And finally...you mention it has several thousand street miles on it, any chance it's still in that car?
 
Yeah 340's are almost impossible to find here.
What do you call a cruiser, just a weekend car or a daily ride?

That's a decent size cam but not huge
 
Thanks for the feedback guys, my car's an auto as were all of the E55 cars in Aus. Weekend car, not daily ride but I don't want a high stall car etc, just something I can get in and cruise whenever I want. Car is currently a /6 but I have a donor 318 that needs rebuilding.

After posting I started thinking about the upgrades to driveline I'd likely need as well. Might end up being too much of an investment for me.

Motor's not in the car anymore, he had photos of it out. I'm in Melb, it's in Sydney so not much chance of me being able to see it. Probably way too big a risk. I got real excited though!
 
I like everything but the cam.

I'd like to see all the numbers but at .050 that cam is pretty big and I have no idea why it needs that much split.

With that cam you need a 3.73 gear and a 3k stall minimum, all of which is very streetable.
 
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Thanks Rose

3k+ stall is definitely not what I'm after so I'd need to swap the cam for my purposes as a minimum.
 
68AusCUDA said:
Thanks Rose

3k+ stall is definitely not what I'm after so I'd need to swap the cam for my purposes as a minimum.
Click to expand...

i spend about 500 USD on a custom converter
it is tight enough i can let my foot off the brake and move the car around at idle
but it is also loose enough i can stomp on it, flash to 3200 RPM and fry the hides
 
Get a 351 Cleveland. They are way more plentiful and cheaper down there. Make more power, too. ;)
 
Cripes! You need torque if you're cruising unless you got a manual.
Go with what you described if you want a damn hot cruiser for a stick.
If you have an auto back off a little to a 260/268 quick ramp cam, advance the cam, go stock converter, tune the F outta the vacuum advance, and let the torque converter multiply. Build the engine for torque if you have an auto.
 
You can't just drop in a smaller cam without looking at the whole setup. A real 12:1 CR will almost certainly give you some serious headaches in avoiding detonation with a smaller cam, and without some fancier fuel. If this engine has a real 12:1 SCR, then the engine is running up at a DCR of around 9.5 already with the F248 cam, and a that is where you can run race fuels only with some real care in tuning. Going to a smaller cam will raise the DCR even more; just dropping 10 degrees in duration will raise the DCR another 0.5 points with the listed LSA (and deriving the ICL from their numbers).

Do you know the actual KB part number? I can only assume they are KB 191's. And the head combustion chamber cc's? And head gaskets? Again, I am using 65 cc's, which is in the normal-ish range, and gives 12:1 SCR with the above pistons. But it is impossible to say if the engine has a real 12:1 SCR without more info, so any 100% reliable SCR/DCR analysis has to wait until better parts info is available.

However, the warning about blithely changing to a a smaller cam without understanding the DCR numbers, still holds......
 
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Yes I missed the 12:1 part.

That , in and of itself, makes the entire combo NOT streetable.

There is no reason to run that much compression and that cam if you want a cruiser. I run a measured 11.08:1 on iron heads, on PG. Everything else is selected to compliment what I have. Mine is a cruiser but not in the way the OP is tending.

Why that much compression?
 
What is the equivalent of BP 98 here in the states?

You may get by with that compression on that fuel.


Still don't like that cam.
 
yellow rose said:
Why that much compression?
Click to expand...
Well, we don't know for sure that it has that much compression, just that the pistons are likely the 12:1 KB's. We don't know chamber size and head gasket in particular. I know absolutely 0 about the heads mentioned; what is a "Ported trick mansweto J Head" ??
 
Wait! A cruiser? With a race engine? A 340/cum 360 no less. And slanty suspension and brakes?
Naw, I'm not seeing that as a cruiser. More like an accident waiting to happen.
You can make that teener into a real nice cruiser. But you still need suspension and brakes!
 
Got it covered AJ, the 318 is out of a donor car and there will be a brakes and suspension swap happening also. Everything's already out of the donor, now the fun bit begins.
 
IMG_3993.JPG
 
I don't car what anybody says, but you guys down there have some of the butt-ugliest Dodges on the face of the earth,lol.
Ok so, we'll look forward to seeing your project progress.

Now I just got one thing more to add; A 340 with a teener cam and a teener top-end makes a big-bore teener, and a strong cruiser engine. With 7% more cubes, you can go down at least one rear gear size, and still have plenty of grunt off the line.
 
Cleveland. Jes sayin.

What's not to like? LOL

351C 4V.jpg
 
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