New here with a 1973 charger

[Northern Runner]

I would have to say that i'm not in the camp of leaving the motor alone! If you can stand to take the motor out here and not drive it, do it! But if you still want to drive it here, I would say throw in a cam and a 4bbl and headers, that will wake up the 400 quite a bit and that's a very quick swap. The only other thing I would suggest doing would be to add some compression to that baby! You could raise it up a full point to 9.2-1 and still have a fun daily driver that could be filled up on pump gas.
Take it from a guy your age who drove a RR in high school that had a warmed over 318 in it. It wasn't that fun all the time. Great cruiser, no get up and go. So my advice, spend some time and money now when you actually have the time and money to put in the car!
Best of luck to ya from one poor broke kid that owns a Mopar to another!

 

[super-bee_ski]

Welcome to the forum!
Thank you for joining.

 

[Northern Runner]

Welcome to the forum!
Thank you for joining.

Woops! Didn't even look at the date on those posts! For some reason it showed up as a newer thread this morning...my bad...shoot me now! lol

 

[Bb70charger500]

First off welcome and let's see some pics You want 400 hp and mpg this is easy dump the big block , most guys would shoot me for saying this but I used to be a young Dum kid (not saying your dum) but a big block is for the old guys with extra cash to burn . I have over 400 hp and am running a 340 small block and I can get 14-16 mpg as long as I'm driveing correctly , I'll be putting a 4 speed behind it soon and I have 3.55 gears out back with a shure grip , in high school I had a 74 charger with a 318 auto and 2.71 gears and even though it was slow as all hell it was a driver that seriously got 25 mpg driveing like a kid , I did the big block thing and it was fun but I enjoyed the little 318 more ,the car wasn't noise heavy I could drive anywhere I wanted and it still went fast just took it longer to get there. I've stuck with small blocks since and the 340 will give a big block a run for its money ,I'm shure there's lots of guys who will agree with me .
Find your self a 72 and older 340 with forged internals and have fun , or if your dead set on a big block run a 383 there cheaper then the rb motors to build and arnt as heavy (car will handle better) if your just wanting a car for 1/4 miles by all means 440 but be honest what are you going to be doing 99% of the time . Good luck hope this is helpful

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Ah just read the post above mine this thing is way old why did it come up as a new one? Oh well doubt he still has the car anyways