Background, a little long so bear with please: I purchased a 72 Demon, 360 with 6 pack, 904, 8 3/4 with 4.10 gears that was "supposedly" set up to race with some minor work. Guy I got it from was not very knowledgeable as far as mechanical goes, more on that soon. Barely ran when I got it last fall. Rebuilt all 3 carbs, changed jets, and still a work in progress. It will start and idle fairly well now. Had air shocks and some home made shackles on the back, so removed those for SS springs and new shocks. In the process of changing those, found that the springs had no center pins. Figured I would take a look at the brakes and the driver's side was full of oil, massive end play and parts rolling around inside. Looked at the passenger side for adjustment and it was all the way in with no lock. Center section has a spool and had no thrust block or green bearings, so the axles were close to failing and falling out. All the safety items in the rear end have been fixed. Basically at this point I question how everything on this car was put together. I built a new 904 that would handle racing. Was in the process of swapping that, so only a few more bolts to get the engine out to inspect the quality of the build. It was leaking oil and had JB weld on the oil pan, so it needed to come out. Despite the constant daily deluge, got it out today and somewhat apart.

360 was supposedly rebuilt recently by the guy's dad who has now passed. He didn't have any detail. Cam is fairly lumpy for this altitude and it did seem to get along pretty good. 75 PSI oil pressure cold. After getting the valve covers off it seems the heads are 1978 360 heads. Looks as if they have had some port work done, and the smog ports plugged. I got one head off the block and someone has gone to the trouble of putting 2.02/1.60 valves in. Heads don't look as if they have been milled. Pistons have 4 valve reliefs and are .057 below deck. I don't have cc's yet to calculate compression ratio, but I'm guessing it would be lucky to have 8-8.5:1. Bores still have cross hatching in them.

The goal is to have a 12 or 13 second bracket car, still somewhat streetable and not break the budget. I got the car and a ton of extra parts for a screaming deal, and after fixing all the other things I wasn't planning on I don't want to invest $5000 if I don't have to. At that point, I will build a stroker if it's a total mess.

So considering all the above, what parts are salvageable? Swap pistons for better compression? Ditch the heads for better ones? Cam change? I had PTC build a new 9.5 converter that should be around 28-3000 stall based on the information I had at hand. I'd prefer not to have to send it back for rework if possible.

Fire away with ideas... Several pics attached showing detail of some things.