can anyone give me a ball park price ,on what i would have to spend to get a rebuild done on a 1975 dodge slaint 6 and a 250 tranny. and what extras should be done to beef it up a little....thanks gus

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new owner of a 1975 dodge street van seeking wisdom from other slant 6 owners

Gus-

That is a big can of worms.

Since you are putting the engine in a van, you want to maximize low RPM torque and not high RPM horsepower.
Here is my recipe for a good 225 for use in a van:

(1) keep the stock one barrel carb. You won't turn enough RPM to ned a bigger carb and finding an air cleaner for a non-stock carb that will clear your doghouse is difficult.

(2) have the head and/or block milled to increase your DYNAMIC (NOT static) compression ratio to around 8.1:1. Search this board for more info RE: calculating dynamic compression.

(3) check that your vibration dampener still indicates TDC accurately. The outer ring can clip.

(4) use one of the special Erson RV cam grinds. Get a stock cam and send it off to Oregon Cam grinders to have it reground to the Erson profile that you want.

(5) degree the cam correctly. The alignment marks on new timing sets are typically way off. You want to make sure that the cam is aligned to the crank correctly.

(6) 2 1/4 inch exhaust all the way back with a free flowing muffler. I don;t like loud vehicles so I say get a stock muffler but for a larger engine. Ask for a muffler for a 1979 Class C Dodge motor home with a 440.

(7) Spend the time to map out and fine tune the distributor advance curve. Disassemble and lube the mechanical advance mechanism in the distributor and verify that the vacuum advance is working correctly. Then fine tune the advance curves for your van.

(8) If you want to, porting the valves might help, or at least a good three or five angle valve job. However, I wouldn't recommend oversize valves in a van. Again, you just won't see the RPMs where this will make a big enough difference to justify the cost.

(9) make sure the carb is rebuilt and adjusted properly.

(10) Use a clutch fan off of a 80s era Dodge van

(11) rig up a cold air intake duct to feed cold air to the snorkel on your air cleaner

Don't build too heavy of an interior.

First question is: does it have to smog, i know that most places on the east coast have a date range to smog (in our state 1975+ smogs in the areas designated as requiring it), that will affect the build a bit.

Depending on how you go:

If you do all the assembly the ball park will run:

$400+/- for the rebuild kit (comes with stock cam)
$500 for the block machining
$200-500+materials: depending on what head work you have done (regrind seats and valves assuming the guides are tight...to redoing the whole thing guides, valves, and seats.

If you go with the extras (i.e. better than stock cam) it's another $120-150.

The transmission will have to go to someone that does good work and knows the old manual trannies...I have a guy locally that has done the little A-230's for about $400 and the A-833OD for a bit more (depends on how trashed everything is inside).

If' it was a 3 on the floor, that's a HD bellhousing and should have the pattern for an NP 435 4 speed to bolt up to it.


-D.Idiot

Gus,

Looking at your pics I think you should tell us more about your van: Why do you want/need to rebuild your engine and transmission? How’s it’s running? What kind of issues doest it have?

Not saying that a rebuild is a bad idea, but since you were installing what looks like a remanufactured carb, and the vacuum lines seems to still be the original ones,
I’m thinking that you may have some minor issues to sort out before going on costly repairs/upgrades.

FIY my van had some issues when I bought it (hesitation, lack of power, etc.)
Wasn’t engine related but caused by a combination of a bad incomplete carb, vacuum leaks, dead vacuum advance pod among other things.

Keep us posted on your progress

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"Hey, I like that paint job you got. What they call that--sorta a cross between Piss Yellow and Puke Green, ain't it?" -- Bob Falfa

thank nomad...looking into that too.....

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new owner of a 1975 dodge street van seeking wisdom from other slant 6 owners