1968 Plymouth Valiant First Gen HEMI

"....... I'm just tryin' to be helpful...."


Denny your insights have been extremely helpful and I really do appreciate your honest input.

Guys I'm no under allusions about the first generation HEMIs. I currently have 2 in driving vehicles. To me and a lot of people they are an impressive looking motor when you open the hood and as 66fs said they’re still worth decent money even as a core/builder.

That said when you pull those big impressive heads off, you're basically looking at a small block. In the case of the engine I have built for this project a small block with 354 cubic inches. The strong point of the Gen 1s has always been their POTENTIAL to make good power numbers. Price of admission on these engines has always been high (relatively speaking), doing the work to realize their potential is an expensive and time consuming project. Even more so now when you consider you can buy a pullout engine that makes more power out of the box without the size and weight penalty.

The motor for this project was put together to be a reliable pump gas street motor capable of daily driving and even cross country cruising, not a race motor. It should be fun especially if I can also manage to get the 46RH into it with about a 4.30 gear, but a serious car…..naw.

I’ve done a fair number of swaps over the years, from ones that pretty much just fell together, to ones that took a lot of head scratching and problem solving. The problem solving is definitely my favorite part. So far I haven’t seen a show stopper on this project, but then again I haven’t started stuffing the engine in.



On a side note, I spent 1973 in Korea. After I got back to the states I walked thru a couple of junk yards and almost cried at what had been thrown away. Insult to injury was what I saw that Detroit was passing off for cars and all the imports that started showing up on the streets. That began my V8 Pinto and V8 Vega stage LOL.