General Questions

[magnumminded]

Hello, guys I am back with a few questions. That being said I am trying to sell my 68 Coronet and on my consideration list is a 78-79 Magnum for something as more daily driver friendly (my car has 4 wheel drums and manual steering and no A/C). That being said I am wondering how the fuel economy is on these cars. I think I get right around 20 hwy with my Coronet and it has a mild 318 and 2.76 highway gears. I have a 1406 edelbrock with an electric choke in my possession. Was wondering how hard is it to convert from the Lean Burn. Any models without Lean Burn. Just wondering what the $2k to $4.5k range would buy in a Magnum? My biggest thing is cruise control and air conditing that works and no rust and a really nice car. Trying to remember if cop car wheels would work with the AMC caps if I want the GT look? Also, how do these cars drive? I have a PST suspension on my Coronet and it handles and rides really well.

 

[Jonnyuma]

3 to 4 grand ougtta net you a pretty nice Magnum. I thought I was doing pretty well getting 17 or so mpg with my Cordoba, you seemed to be doing better at 20. Mine's a 360 4 bbl so I probably give up a few mpgs there, even though I mostly try to stay out of the secondaries. It's recently been pressed into daily driver status, about 40 mi per day so, even though I've owned and tinkered with this car for 6 or 7 years, I'm only just now starting to really work the bugs out. I think they all came w LeanBurn, the small blocks, anyway. Although I'd bet that not very many of them still have it as an operational system. Most have been converted to something that actually works, either a MoparPerformance electronic ignition or an HEI type setup (that's what I did). It's not a difficult operation, but there are parts to change out. Most came w cruise control and I think a/c was standard.

 

[Clarksdale68]

Hi - I picked up a 76 Cordoba with 20K original for $5200, for reference. Very little rust and ran good ... well, pretty good with the Lean Burn. I swapped in a 1406 Edelbrock, Performer manifold and the Mopar electronic ignition and now it runs flawlessly. I would recommend one component at a time, in case things don't go smoothly you can isolate the problem. Mine's a 400, and the biggest problem to getting it started after the big swap was finding the right timing. 5 deg BTDC initial did the trick. I'm no mechanic, by the way. Good luck and have fun.

Edit: I get about 10 mpg around town with the big block, but I like to open it up when I can

 

[Jonnyuma]

I got all excited when my new parts showed up and started tearing into the job without the proper prep. Oh sure, I marked where the distributor was pointing, like you always do when you remove it. But...oops. that didn't help much when I put the new, unmarked dist in. Duh.
Much easier to find tdc FIRST. The rest is pretty simple.
If you haven't pulled a distributor out of a small block before, I think the two most important things are A) find tdc first, and B) don't let the drive gear come up and/or out with the dist.