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440 motor home engine swap

cbodybob

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I bought a D150 from a friend of mine who had installed a 440 from a motor home in it. He said it was a 77 ish year & had about 70K miles on it. Has a normal legnth 727 trans on it. Not the shorty. He put new gaskets on it & painted it orange. It looks darn good in there It runs good. Has good oil psi. No noises. So I was wondering what the rated HP & torque of this engine would be. Its got a thermo quad on it. ANyone know? I have always heard the MH engines had lower HP, but more torque down low
 

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I don't know the numbers, but the truck motors don't have more torque down low, it's just that their torque isn't so bad as their horse power. I'm running a low compression 413 in my 69 belvedere and it gets out of its own way pretty good, used to destroy old MT Sportsmans in 1st and 2nd.
 
As HT413 said, they don't really have more torque, they really just have less horsepower haha.

I don't know the exact number but its around 220-230. If you want to hotrod it they will make power, not quite as much as the earlier engines with the same mods, but they can run well. It really won't run much worse than a late 60s non HP 440.

P.S. does it have peanut plug heads or 452s?
 
Yea I was thinking one of those mild Summit cams, swap meet eddy intake & maybe a Holley 750. I already bought a 8 3/4 rear from a 73 D100. & I bought a 3.91 sure grip from the guy I bought the truck from.

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I'm not sure on the heads. If that's important I can check.
 
I think it's a GREAT combo for a truck. Nice cam and maybe a nice dual plane manifold and some headers and I bet you'll have a real beast.
 
I put a 75 440 auto in a 72 D100. Came with a 3.55 open rear 8 3/4. That truck would run 14 flat in the quarter mile. It was a wicked truck. It could pull a house and not breathe hard. It looked like crap and ran like hell.
Good times...
72 D100.jpg
 
Yea I was thinking one of those mild Summit cams, swap meet eddy intake & maybe a Holley 750. I already bought a 8 3/4 rear from a 73 D100. & I bought a 3.91 sure grip from the guy I bought the truck from.

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I'm not sure on the heads. If that's important I can check.

Either summit cam will work well and be an upgrade. The smaller one is basically an HP equivalent and will be a nice gain. The bigger one isnt too radical, but will have a nice lope and detract from low end slightly. Do the springs too.

Heads dont matter, just something you may run into when you go to change the plugs.
 
Yes I was reading over on the C body forum about a guy who put the big Summit cam in his C & was very happy with it. Like the was it sounded & the performance. So I figured the 3.91 would only help. If it's too much I can change it. I definately want to hear the cam & have some low end.

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Oh yes I will do the springs.
 
The nice thing about the later low compression big blocks is that they run pretty well on the crap gas we get these days once they are tuned for it.
 
seems to me that a lot of the truck engines have steel cranks or I`m just lucky.
 
Turn the crank until a piston is near the top end of the stroke. take a thin screw driver and insert it in a spark plug hole. Drag the screwdriver across the top of the piston and see if it is flat topped or dished down . You can feel the difference. If it is dished, it is very low compression and you won't be able to get much power out of it. If it is flat top, it will still be low compression, but it is fairly easy to get it to 9.5 compression just by changing heads and useing thin shim head gaskets......................MO
 
That's ok corn patch. I already have a race car. Just want something to cruise around on the street. It runs pretty good stock.
 
Here is a dyno test on a low compression 440 using the summit 6400 cam as a starting point. The thread starts kind slow with cylinder head talk and the dyno results begin on page 3. Coming up shortly is a dyno test on a low compression 2bbl 400 using the same Summit cam from the 440

http://www.forbbodiesonly.com/moparforum/showthread.php?58687-Iron-head-test-starting-on-78-440&highlight=low+compression+440.

IQ I enjoy the testing you do. Its nice to have someone doing this on their own dime and not putting together 15K engines with 440-1s and 13:1 compression that most people just aren't going to be doing. I look forward to the 400 testing.
 
Great link, and info IQ52

I enjoyed the read and have jotted down some numbers and info for future use with my 1974 440 wedge. Thanks!
 
That summit 6400 cam has same specs as a chevy cam
and about same specs as the factory HP cam
you can do much better especially with a low compression 440
look for shorter duration - more lift Howards, ultradyne, Engle (special order not the cat grinds)
jones etc there are a couple of comps in their purple series- check the .904 grinds in the back of the catalog in every case
 
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