my one buddy put together a 72 duster for his wife several years ago. [may even be closer to ten or 15. ya all know how times flies by !]
as he had no engine and transmission for this thing, and i had a good 318/904 sitting in my shop that was in the road, i gave it to him. it was out of a 74[ish] 2wd pickup, and only had a very low 40k [i'm thinking around 42] on it, i figured it would be good enough for how those folks drive their cars.
i pulled the heads off, did a fast-n-sloppy valve job, pulled a couple of main & rod caps to have a lookie see, [they were great !] bores looked good [still cross hatch on the walls and no signs of rust from sitting around] new double roller timing chain with advance keys cut, gaskets, core plugs, fuel pump, water pump, etc, etc...........
had it all together, then he says : "i want a lumpy cam........." really ? the way you guys drive that thing ???????
ok, so i had [or got, i can't remember] a factory hydraulic 340 stick cam and lifter kit. i don't even remember the brand. put it in "dot-to-dot" 4 advanced, never checked anything, and buttoned it up. still had the 318 valve springs the truck motor came with. [no exhaust rotators]
had an old 318 streetmaster intake with the tiny ports on the shelf, gave that to him. [he just COULDN'T have the LOWLY 2 barrel intake the truck came with !] got one of those chinesium cast adapter plates to mate a 500cfm carterbrock to the super small plenum streetmaster.
anyway, that combo was installed with the stock pickup converter that was in the 904, along with a "home made shift kit" [i had some leftover TF2 parts] and a B-body width 8 3/4 with 2.94 peg leg gears.
then it sat while the body work and paint was done.
exhaust ended up being a TTI 2 1/2" system using iron manifolds [can't tell ya from what, although the TTI dealer needed the casting numbers for the correct head pipes] and going through dynomax mufflers.
they got it running [not doing the proper break-in procedure !
] so a couple of weeks after, they asked me to tune it up, as it was pretty doggy.
first thing i thought of was a couple of cam lobes gone, but it turned out to be the distributor was set at 5 degrees AFTER tdc, instead of 15 or so before !
i tweeked the carb some, and that thing sounded GOOD ! to say i was surprised would be a HUGE understatement !
also had 25+lbs of oil pressure at idle, instantly jumping to 60 at the crack of the throttle.
had a nasty sounding idle, and after taking it for a ride, driving it like i stole it with my buddy along, that thing ran GREAT ! roasted the peg leg from an idle after breaking loose both rear tires for about 10 feet or so until the pegger couldn't keep up.....
got back to his house, and he couldn't believe the car ran that well after i had fiddled with it some.
car is still running great till this day, and with the 2.94 gears, on trips they get 20+mpg the way they drive.
the point i'm trying to make [if one could call it that] is, this combo was just tossed together with junk i had laying around that was in my road [with the exception of the carterbrock carb, intake adapter, and the carterbrock adapter needed for the transmission kick down linkage], given to a friend, and the results were exceptionally surprising to me !
will this work for everyone ? who knows ? probably not, but maybe if one is lucky or has lead a good life like my buddy has.
remember, this is just what happened to ME throwing a lowly 318 together.
your mileage WILL vary............
