Here's what I'm running right now in my '74, this little 2.3 has a Motorcraft 2100 carb, a better cam, and better ignition system, but that's about it... just some "driveability improvements" until I track down a 289 for the car since I just had this 2.3 (came out of an '88 Ranger and spent a few years in my '88 Mustang LX before it made it to the best car it's powered yet!) laying around and the original finally smoked the rings and something in the valvetrain.
Yeah, this one's advanced a little, but I didn't do it, I think my dad did when he put a timing belt on it when it was in the '88 Mustang LX, not sure if it was intentional or not, but the car's throttle repsonse was a little better afterwards so we left it alone. I did degree and advance the cam in the original engine from my '74 when I swapped in a new cam, I think it was 4 degrees?
Silly little 2.3? A full-house race version will make over 200 horsepower...of course its all over 7000 rpm! I scanned an old ('79 or '80) article from Hot Rod magazine on building a hipo 2.3L engine. I'll post a link as soon as I can dig it out. The engine was built in stages with the hottest stage making 225 HP at 7500 rpm. Of course that was a full race engine with no torque under 3500 rpm. The great thing was that in Stage 2 they raised the HP from the stock 90 to about 150 and still had a very streetable engine. 150 HP in a 2800 lb car with a low set of gears would move along pretty well. What you probably need most to go with your improved carb and cam is a full-length header and high flow exhaust. Your mixture is probably too rich with that carb unless you've done some tuning. The header might help lean it out a bit. A higher compression ratio would help too, but would be a lot more work. The HR article called for a 45 thousanths cut on the head for the Stage 3 engine! I believe they had well over 11-to-1 at that point. Of course the biggest improvement would be a higher flowing head...a DOHC head would be best. With Ford owning Cosworth at one point, its ironic that the Vega ended up with a Cosworth DOHC head and the MII didn't. There is a company making a late-model aluminum head with much better flow for about $1200, and there are few guys adapting a Volvo DOHC head to the 2.3L, but it looks like a lot of work. I want to try my hand at the 150 HP version...about the only thing I'm lacking is the cam. I picked up the Holley 390 cfm 4bbl and Offenhouser dual plane 4bbl intake a few years ago. The ultimate carb setup is a pair of Weber 2bbl sidedrafts...
