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Lets see here... your gonna buy a stroke kit... that
part is a wash... why not buy a 360 block and get the
added cubes... that would cost about 200 buck more..
cubes are great for the street........ JMO

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Pick up a later roller cam 360 block, everything else costs the same. Plus the larger bore of a 360 will help unshroud the intake valves.

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Lets see here... your gonna buy a stroke kit... that
part is a wash... why not buy a 360 block and get the
added cubes... that would cost about 200 buck more..
cubes are great for the street........ JMO

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Pick up a later roller cam 360 block, everything else costs the same. Plus the larger bore of a 360 will help unshroud the intake valves.

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And I owned a pretty stout 318-390" stroker. The same package with a 360-408" engine probably would have been worth another 20-30lb ft of torque at no added cost. 360 blocks aren't that hard to come by.

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Lets see here... your gonna buy a stroke kit... that
part is a wash... why not buy a 360 block and get the
added cubes... that would cost about 200 buck more..
cubes are great for the street........ JMO

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Pick up a later roller cam 360 block, everything else costs the same. Plus the larger bore of a 360 will help unshroud the intake valves.

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And I owned a pretty stout 318-390" stroker. The same package with a 360-408" engine probably would have been worth another 20-30lb ft of torque at no added cost. 360 blocks aren't that hard to come by.

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30lbs from 16 cubes not to mention bigger bearings robbing power due to the SB good valve position they do not see much more flow (a little but not significant) from a 3.91 bore to a 4 inch bore, that is only gonna give you .045 more clearance on one little section of the valve, a very small notch on the bore would do the same thing for free.

And 360 roller LA blocks are hard to find being only a couple years in very low selling rigs that were not always optioned with 360s. If you are willing to use magnum heads (you should) then finding roller blocks is real easy.

Any differance in a 318 stroker and 408 stroker is minimal, especially when you start looking for a roller block or even any block at all that is not free.

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You might want to think that over carefully..

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/show...rue#Post7384092

This was a 318/390..

Chris..

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Idk if this makes a diffrence but the 318 actually came out of a 83 pickup. The motor is on a stand atm. Does anything change with that motor? It really sounds like its a matter of opinion or choice with the 318 vs 360 arguement. I'm going to stick with the 318 an stroke it to a 390 an bore the block .40 over. I'm going to stick with the 318 cuz i have a 383 block sitting soooo buying a 360 would just mean another motor sitting until I can sell it. I may plan on using nitrous for track use only permitting that the motor will handle it. The car will have a A833 for sure an a 8 3/4 axle for sure. Im new to this so any advice is appreciated. I am going to lighten the car as much as possible since it will see the track but i need to keep in mind it will also be a friday night cruiser. Thanks for all the input!!

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The '83 318 block is different than the older 318 blocks. The decks are weaker, and susceptible to cracking between the coolant hole and the nearest head bolt hole. I know this, because I was going to use a 1983 318 block to build a 390, and that block had a total of 10 cracks on both decks. They weren't discovered until after several machining operations. Here is a pic of what my engine builder found. Two differences you can see are the head bolt holes going through the deck, and larger coolant holes, both of which weaken the deck. On the older blocks, the head bolt holes are blind and the coolant holes are smaller.



I'm not saying your block WILL have these cracks, all I am suggesting is that you have those decks carefully examined before sinking money into machine work on that particular block. Also, have your machinist check for twist in the block. Seems the '83 blocks in general are on the weak side, which proved to be the case with mine. It was twisted pretty bad. Although my machinist informed me that the cracks could be fixed, I decided to cut my losses and start over with a beefier 1970 318 block that was available to me.

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I'm going to stick with the 318 an stroke it to a 390 an bore the block .40 over.

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My point about the 360 vs. 390 was purely cost related. You could get a running magnum 360 cheap. All of the rebuild parts are a wash between the two (gaskets, machining, etc…)

My opinion is that you can buy a 360 magnum motor for the price of a cast 318 stroker crank. So call that a wash dollar for dollar.

But if you're on a budget, I'd MUCH rather have a 360" with a 360 magnum head, then a 390" with a '83 318 smog head any day of the week.

It was more then just the cubic inch difference. Just depends how much money you want to spend…

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you can? here core 360 mags go for over $500, and runners are in the $800-1k range, even if they're over 120k miles...318 mags go for about 1/2 what the 360's do...

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you can? here core 360 mags go for over $500, and runners are in the $800-1k range, even if they're over 120k miles...318 mags go for about 1/2 what the 360's do...

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Yup really... well based on my 15 seconds of searching anyway...

http://detroit.craigslist.org/wyn/pts/3337858380.html

Listed at $300 obo.

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