What else are you going to get for $1500? All I can think of is a junkyard engine with the usual bolt on goodies and a fresh gasket set. If the OP is satisfied with that, a running 440/413/400 for 500 bucks can still be found. May be a smogger era engine but if it's good running then add a full gasket kit, the "big" summit cam and a set of summit headers. Used aluminum intake of your choice, recurve the stock distributor and by the time you add the other stuff like carb, fuel pump, tune up parts, etc you might be able to squeak it in at 1500 bucks. Would probably make 400hp and perform pretty good in an a-body. May burn a little oil but should be a good runner. However next HP step up from there would be costly, as in a full rebuild, aftermarket heads, etc.

I'm putting a stroker small block in a '69 Valiant, 360 block with a 4" crank, RHS heads, solid flat tappet cam, 10-1 compression, should make around 475hp, using a A500 trans, with its low first gear and a 3.73 rear set should be fun all around. The car will probably weigh 3300 I'm guessing?, manual steering and brakes, bench seat, 8.75 rear, Calvert bars and springs Pro Star wheels. Having the torque that the crank provides, light car, and easy to work on engine bay, (changing plugs etc), better handling than a BB due to weight on the nose, should be a fun car, maybe mid-11's and really driveable with the overdrive.

I know not much about carb'd turbo system so can't say. One would assume that for a given boost level the engine would fed the proper fuel and spark advance.

I offer no opinion on DIY turbo systems aside from I'd advise against one unless you had some fabricating skills and knew a bit about tuning forced induction.

Otherwise it could get real expensive real fast.

^^^ I'm a big block guy but if you're starting from scratch I vote on this ^^^


I've had a couple 9 second Mopars and my current Duster would easily run 10's but I built it from scratch just to cruise, it's a 400 low deck stroked to 500 inches, the car is a total blast and everything I wanted but I'm dying to have an overdrive transmission some how!! The small block stroker will make power and will be much easier to work on as everyone has already pointed out. There are no wrong answers in this thread, lots of good ideas, but my honest opinion is that CHEAP and BOOST do not belong in the same sentence. And the little 340 and 360 motors are nowhere near as fun for the most part as a big block or a stroked small block, been there done that, they usually require more to run 11's than what some of these guys are saying(although I do believe that they did it, I've seen it done and did it my self with 346 cubic inches), then the streetability starts to fade.

I was planning a small block for my Duster but ran across a great deal on a new forged stroker kit that a guy had laying around, a local well known guy built my short block very cheap and bingo, 500 cubic inches. I went this route for torque so that I could run a fairly tight converter for street duty, 3.23 or 3.55 gears, pump gas 10:1 compression, small 557 lift solid cam, and I found a guy selling B-body headers that were already massaged to fit a low deck A-body, got those for $75 and used an AR-Engineering motor plate so I could cut the motor mount stands off my k-member and have room for the headers and oil pump etc.
I then found a deal on racingjunk.com on a set of CNC max wedge Eddy heads and Indy intake.
This car would easily run 10's and it could be used as a daily driver, it is a total blast and I have plenty of areas to improve on if I ever want to go faster.

I'm not saying to go with the turbo route. I'm saying, bottom of the barrel, any newbie to a turbo swap will be paying $1500 minimum for a DIY system. If it were me, I'd find an engine (sb or bb), have a machine shop go through it, do some small upgrades here and there as needed, and throw it in the car. That way, I know exactly what's going into the car and it should be reliable (depending on who builds it). I would only do a turbo swap if it was a side project after I had a running car to go off of.

I agree with you 100%

I have a big block Dart, a small block Barracuda, and a 5.7 Hemi Demon.
It's hard to beat the efficiency of the late model engine.
The Demon runs 11s with only a cam change.

I agree, a turbo swap should not be undertaken by a novice. However the OP asked what I would do, not what he should do, which is why I suggested the idea of the centrifugal supercharger which can be done with a very minimum of fabrication skill. You could do it without even owning a welder. I've had more fun playing with stuff like this than my whole scratch build 440 project.

Disclaimer: I have not read most of the previous posts.

I would put in a 5.7 Hemi with OD transmission. Here's why: Big blocks are great, but the new Hemi at 475 lb is at least 200 lb lighter than a stock big block. It seems to have plenty of power. With the OD transmission you could run 3.91s for street quickness.

The only thing the axle shaft sees is lb-ft of torque. I don't care what you "feel" or what your "butt dyno" tells you. The placebo effect is so strong that around one third of patients given a placebo reported improved condition. It could certainly be working here with big blocks.

R.

PS: If you intend to do the bulk of your driving 1/4 mile at a time where you don't have to go around corners at speed, the bigblock makes a lot more sense.

PPS: The stroked Mag motor is the middle ground in all this.

A local man named Dave Moore engineered a 5.7 swap into a Duster and his brother-in-law, Tom Shrum, did the fabricating. It was a lot of work obviously because there were no factory guidelines to follow. The mostly stock 5.7 with OD Auto runs 12s and is driven to the track and raced on street tires. I have known Dave and Tom for probably 35 years. Dave used to drive a 67 Barracuda with a 440 and Tom built a Plymouth Arrow with a 440. Dave has been in his chair for as long as I have known him and I have never been able to beat him on the track.

Actually, I'm not quite a newbie. Just build a shop and have all the necessary equipment to fab turbo piping, so it wouldn't be something I would be totally over my head with.

But I agree, having a car that's driving now is preferable to having a car on jackstands waiting on a turbo.

$1500-$2000 isn't that bad for a turbo build.

Not quite.... I'm just not willing to spend, say, $6500 on something when I can get a similar result for, say, $4500 by going another route.

The man-hours would probably be more of a factor... good thing you brought it up. That was the other reason I forgot about that made me initially shy away from a turbo build.

A centrifugal supercharger wouldn't have that disadvantage (at least as badly), as DaytonaTurbo suggested.

This is definitely going to be the swap of choice in the near future.

Maybe I'm not quite understanding you. You mean having your car sitting while you figure out your piping and such? Yes that would burn up some extra man hours, however starting by dropping in a good running 5.2 or 5.9 magnum would gain you a lot of that back if as far as you're going into the engine is to upgrade head gaskets. The beauty of a centrifugal s/c, while more costly, is you could dump in the engine, get it running and driving and add the s/c after the fact, and save a whole lot of man hours in the process.

Yeah, that's what I meant, and I agree.