Hello all. New to the forum and this is my first post. This year I bought a 1977 442 with a 350. It came with a Crane cam (specs pictured). I took off the rusty, leaking headers and put Thornton JR exhaust manifolds and 2.5" stainless dual exhaust with an X pipe. I want to wake up the engine a bit and one of the most common suggestions is to replace the "smog" heads with earlier year heads. I found a set of #7 rebuilt heads. The owner says the heads have stainless steel valves bronze guides 2” intake with 1.62 exhaust been milled 0.012. Also included with various other things I'm getting is a Lunati Voodoo cam (specs pictured). Do you guys think there's any advantage to going through the trouble of putting this cam in or is there not enough of an advantage over the cam that is currently in the motor now?




Lunati cam:



Forgot to mention I'm probably putting an Edelbrock 2711 intake on it as well.

 

Rear axle ratio? Torque converter stall RPM?

 

That will definitely make more power, more agressive cam and will raise compression nicely. But the stock 1600 stall converter and probably mid 2 gears will definitely hurt it off the line.

 

Want to change the rear to a posi with 3.42 gears. Also want to have the tranny rebuilt and will address the stall converter then. All in due time as the budget allows!

 

Yeah, I don't know for sure but think the person who put the cam in changed the stall. Also, plan to swap out the 2.41 gear for a 3.42 once budget allows.

 

I did similar mods to my 75 350 4 bbl
mild lunati cam, eddy intake, Thornton manifolds, , dual exhaust of course, #5 heads , 3:42 gears/ posi, new converter with a rebuilt 2004R tranny.
Did it ever wake up the car.
A couple of things I learned. It ran very lean with original jetting after the motor work. It also felt like I was stuck in 2nd gear with the original th350 trans in it with 235x70x15 tires 3:42 gears. I upgraded to 255x70x15 on the rear over the years. Runs very nice on the highway in lock up.

 

If it's not too much trouble, consider cutting another .012 off the cylinder heads to really take full advantage of the smaller combustion chamber. The replacement gasket is .024" thicker than the factory. The motor has a huge 22cc dish in it.

 

You should be good to go with a gear swap and plan trans rebuild. As said, a 2004R is a fantastic swap, unless 3000 rpm at highway speeds doesn't bother you then go for the TH350 swap. Figure the pistons at least .020" in the hole, maybe as much as .030". Unless you use a .027" or thinner gasket, you will be under 9 to 1 for sure. You need at least 64cc chambers even with the .027" head gaskets to be at just 9 to 1 with the stock piston being down in the hole. I ran such a motor, #6 heads milled to 64cc heads, .028" head gaskets on a stock 76 short block with a 214/214 .472/.472 on a 110 LSA cam, 2004R with a 2350 flash stall, 2200 to 2500 stall converter with a less than ideal 2.78 open with a short 25" tall tire would do 1/4 block one, wheel peels.