Living with a 2.21....

nm9stheham said
OP, your actual SCR is in the low 8's, not the high 8's. The 130 cranking pressure says that. You're just in the RPM's, at low speeds, of the engine dropping off of the low end of the torque curve, with that lower compression and the cam. The chronic stock 318 issue.....

As above, more compression is the best answer for the 'low RPM torque blues'. You can do a bit with advancing the cam (the earlier ICA mentioned above) but it is going to be more limited of a help at the low RPM's. But more compression means new pistons and going into the engine again.

The higher TC stall is one answer, to let the engine rev up from a stop to a better spot on the torque curve. But if you are driving over the road 95% of the time, there goes your locking TC and the better fuel mileage. I wonder if there is a locking TC with a higher stall that you can get.....??

As to the Scr I back-calculated the 130psi to; 8.5@ 1000ft, at in ICA of 60*, and 8.3 @ sealevel which yields a VP of100....... at least 33 points below a stock teener (133 for 1969), and 15 points higher than a slanty (85 for 1969). Both at sealevel, and both the highest compression oem examples.
I, probably as most of you, don't want to flat-out call this a bad combo, cuz in this application it's not. The saving graces are 1) it is 95% for a hiway cruiser, and 2) you gotta love the 3-2 downshift at 65 mph!
I built a similar combo back in the 80s, and it was a worse combo......... cuz it was a DD city car, with 2.73s. I had the same results; namely gutless on take-off but getting better with rpm , then back to being a dog on the 1-2 upshift, but a fantastic 3-2 downshift at 50/55 for passing. I put a 2800 in it and that was no big help. That was a low-compression 1973 block with 340 top end and cam. But when I put the 318 cam and heads back on it, then that 2800 was pretty sweet. And 3.55s completed the transformation.
That engine was also pretty sweet with the TTI's and 4.30s and a stick. I still have it, lo these several decades later.