Forgive me my Mopar brothers. I have sinned
I saw a YT video by a Ford guy, I think Thunderhead289 is his name... he showed an easy way to check if you have a 360 or 390 FE motor by measuring the stroke with a piece of welding rod through the spark plug hole since that's the only difference between the 2.
Friend of mine in grad school had a 1975 F100 Ranger with the 360 and a C6, he swore with the 2.9x rear end he got 20+ MPG. Kinda hard to believe though and he drove it like a baby, never took it on the freeway because it seemed to run higher RPMs than it should and he was afraid something was up with the converter or the brakes were dragging (he was pretty obsessive-compulsive, typical brilliant engineer type lol). I have my 1972 D200 with a 360/727, full-floater D60 rear with 3.54 gears and 33" tires and it consistently gets 10 MPG no matter how I drive it, goes down maybe to 9 if I'm pulling a 5000-lb trailer. Not really sure why but all old Dodge trucks get terrible gas mileage unless maybe it's a RCSB D100 with a 318, manual trans and tall gears but even then 20 MPG is a stretch.
I figure if it gets 10 MPG now, a fresh-rebuilt and warmed-up 440 can't do much worse... planning to build and swap one in over the next year. Truck does fine with the 360 pulling light loads but it could use a lot more balls pulling heavier loads on the freeway up and down the big hills on I-25.
Anyway sorry got off track there, @MileHighDart that's a great-looking truck I definitely like it. Nice thing about living in Colorado, there are old work/farm trucks all over the place with minimal rust since the climate is so dry here. My D200 originally came from Nevada and spent most/all of its life as a camper truck being driven by an older couple so it's in excellent shape for being a 50-year-old pickup.
I saw a YT video by a Ford guy, I think Thunderhead289 is his name... he showed an easy way to check if you have a 360 or 390 FE motor by measuring the stroke with a piece of welding rod through the spark plug hole since that's the only difference between the 2.
Friend of mine in grad school had a 1975 F100 Ranger with the 360 and a C6, he swore with the 2.9x rear end he got 20+ MPG. Kinda hard to believe though and he drove it like a baby, never took it on the freeway because it seemed to run higher RPMs than it should and he was afraid something was up with the converter or the brakes were dragging (he was pretty obsessive-compulsive, typical brilliant engineer type lol). I have my 1972 D200 with a 360/727, full-floater D60 rear with 3.54 gears and 33" tires and it consistently gets 10 MPG no matter how I drive it, goes down maybe to 9 if I'm pulling a 5000-lb trailer. Not really sure why but all old Dodge trucks get terrible gas mileage unless maybe it's a RCSB D100 with a 318, manual trans and tall gears but even then 20 MPG is a stretch.
I figure if it gets 10 MPG now, a fresh-rebuilt and warmed-up 440 can't do much worse... planning to build and swap one in over the next year. Truck does fine with the 360 pulling light loads but it could use a lot more balls pulling heavier loads on the freeway up and down the big hills on I-25.
Anyway sorry got off track there, @MileHighDart that's a great-looking truck I definitely like it. Nice thing about living in Colorado, there are old work/farm trucks all over the place with minimal rust since the climate is so dry here. My D200 originally came from Nevada and spent most/all of its life as a camper truck being driven by an older couple so it's in excellent shape for being a 50-year-old pickup.