Suggestions For Low Cost Performance Upgrades

[mentalward]

Although we are complete newbies, our plan is to pull this engine, disassemble it, clean up all the parts, paint and chrome parts as desired, and god willing, put it back together again.

The previous owner had the car for three years. He said a former owner "recently" rebuilt the engine, but there's no documentation for the history. The engine currently runs and sounds good.

I'm not interested in maximizing performance, but I'm curious if there are some low cost upgrades that will improve performance (more bang for the buck kinda thing).

You can't tell from the linked photo, but the headers are very rusty, and I'm guessing they are stock. If there's a performance benefit in changing the headers (spending no more than $800), how do I determine what headers to buy, other than the more $ the better?

Thx.

https://goo.gl/photos/6ojsh8WrVw6ZrUn96

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMcdtdylFANtoXy21HCevW3BJt78WTsVv0Y28V7

 

[zookeeper]

The best thing you can do right now, given your budget, is swap to a 4 barrel carb and intake. I recently swapped my 2 x 4 intake and Holley 390 carbs out for a Quick Fuel Technology 600 cfm carb (about $360 on ebay) and a no-name, dual plane, polished intake ($170 ebay) and a 14" round air cleaner ($40 ebay) and am thrilled with the performance and mileage increases in both. It's not hard provided you take your time and know how to get a distributer in and out. If you have any problems, post them up here and someone will help.

 

[zookeeper]

Also, be careful as to how far you go with the disassembly. I'd simply clean the engine, leave the heads on and paint it, then put the nice stuff back on. I certainly wouldn't start yanking heads off with an $800 budget