Quote Originally Posted by Mike P View Post
Seth I’m more into the nostalgia/sleeper stuff so take this with a big grain of salt. Personally my first impulse would be to throw a mild Big Block in it.

My second choice (and the one I’d really more likely do if I was going to drive the car much) would be to use a 350 or 383 with a good set of cast iron exhaust manifolds (something like the repop Corvette manifolds by Dorman or the Sanderson’s. I’d go the sleeper look on the engine. If I went with an aftermarket intake and heads I’d grind off the manufactures logo on the manifold and paint it and the heads engine color. Then I’d either go with the stock painted valve covers and air cleaner or chrome aftermarket ones with a 307 or low HP 350 air cleaner decal.

Basically that’s the formula I used when I built my 77 Mustang II coupe. With the 302 Decal on the aircleaner (and 302 emissions decal on the stock painted valve covers) it looked so stock under the hood nobody picked up on the fact that it was really a 351W with Edelbrock heads and intake.

By the way if you do go the fist gen SB route those old A6 AC compressors are about bullet proof, they draw a bit of HP but will last as long as about anything else …..and a lot better than the R4s that replaced them.

Like I said just my 2 cents.



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I'm not really a big block guy, to me they always seem like their a lot of iron per horsepower vs small block. I'm still a little on the fence on what to do even though my mind was made up yesterday . I don't even know why I'm trying to figure it out already cause I got a lot of work to do to the car b/f I need a motor. It's kinda good to keep an eye out for parts I guess. Against all input I still haven't ruled out running a sbc for the nostalgic reasons like you said. I found out I can get a running 97 vortec about 2 miles from here for about $400 and that comes with the pickup. I found that I can put valve cover adapters the run the 4 bolt covers on the heads to hide the fact that their vortec heads, if they don't notice the intake. Then I would just put an intake, cam and long tube headers on it. I don't know what it is about this car but it seems like its not a cut and dry decision. Like you said , that old school A6 compressor is pretty awesome on there too. I'll go take my ADD pills and let you know what I'm thinking tomorrow