'68 318 to carbed Magnum 5.2: Check my checklist

cudak888 said
Here's where it gets a bit interesting: According to my Mopar master-tech neighbor (who is often wrong - HAH!), this should be a heavy-duty 360, a.k.a. the 360-2 or 360-3 - more or less similar to the E58 depending on marketing. The exhaust valves rotators seem to indicate this is indeed one of the heavy duty motors.

Whichever version it is though, very little information directly from a Chrysler manual seems to be available on it, though the internet's armchair dragracers have wasted no time filling Google chock-full of contradictory bull$hit as to what actually constitutes the 360-2 from the 360-3, much less the actual specs of either. Most of the good information out there about the HD 360s seem to relate to the late-'70s carbureted examples, and not the relatively short-lived roller-cam, throttle-body injected engines from '88-91 (which seem to be almost exclusively of interest only to Ramcharger enthusiasts). I have the VIN from the van, but it doesn't match up with the post-ISO 3779 VIN from the van: 2B6JB31Z0KK375938.
-Kurt

We took apart an '88 360 and it also had the rotators and dual pickup dizzy. Don't know exactly what the timing chain looked like- the E58's have more cam to them but I can't say there's a ton more obvious differences between them and their contemporary 360s. The old "HD" 360s (E55 in cars, not sure if offered in trucks/vans) seemed to also have the big cam even if they had the 2bbl. As you mentioned, there were different head cast numbers and they were rated as having lower CR than the "regular" 360s but had more HP and TQ.

The roller cam motors from '89-'92 have a lot of appeal for other enthusiasts however the 318 TBI motors have a much more limited audience since there were many year 318 roller cam carb motors and 318s are less common the focal point of a premium build. I've seen two motors that good- one was a 240k mile 318 the other with less than 10k on the build.