My 360 Saga

Jason I think if I bought an engine that was supposed to be turn-key and it was in that bad condition I wouldn't be able to keep quiet about it. The seller should take it back and refund your money or at least refund part of it if you want to still keep the engine. Looks to me like you got a rebuildable long block with smogger heads which is worth about $200. The tunnel ram and carbs. (provided the carbs didn't have water in them which ruins them) might be worth $300-400 if the carbs are rebuildable. Have you contacted the seller to let him know the problems?

I can understand the budget but I can tell you there's not much chance of rebuilding it for $600-700. If I had a guess looking at what you have and what you want your going to need about 3-4 times that amount of money.

The stock compression on 360's was in the low 8's so that's not good for making really good power. To raise the compression you'll need to swap out the pistons to either kb107's or sealed power cp116's. Either of those will get you in the high 9's for compression if the heads haven't been decked.

As far as the heads go. The exhaust side needs more help than the intake so porting the intake side is only going to make the imbalance of flow worse and the Mopar 284/.484 cam your looking at is a straight grind. In other words no extra lift or duration on the exhaust side. A split duration grind would help balance out the difference but that's JMHO. If your going pretty wild on power the bigger valves will help but if your just looking for about 350-375 hp you really don't need them. The smaller valves usually produce more velocity too so it will have more torque with them.

Here's a link to a compression calculator that you put measurements in and it tells you the comp ratio. You will need at least the crank and one piston assy. to take some measurements. You'll also need a dial indicator to determine how far in the hole the pistons are. You'll also need to know some figures on the head gaskets you'll be using. If their the Fel-Pro's I can tell you the compressed thickness is .039 and the bore is 4.180 If you use anything else you'll have to find out their measurements.

http://www.csgnetwork.com/compcalc.html

Reassembly isn't really hard. You just have to have a very clean place to do it and be careful when assembling it so as to not scratch a piston or the crank. You'll need a ring compressor. And be careful installing the rings because they break pretty easy if spread too far. They make a ring installation tool that works good and it's not too expensive. The big thing is clean, clean, clean. Everything has to be very clean. Any debris floating around in it will scar something. If you haven't ever rebuilt an engine before definitely get a book that tells you the in-s and out-s. There are several on small block Mopars.

An Air-gap is a much better intake than the M1 dual plane from what I've read.

Any questions just call. I think you should still have my phone number since I just sent you an e-mail a couple days ago and I put it in there. Tracy