Just got my first "old" car a couple months ago, a 73 Swinger with the slant 6. The Swinger is going to be my "fun/learner/weekend" car so I don't care about gas mileage, just want to get as much horsepower out of it as possible without doing an engine swap or risking blowing it up. What is the best route to go? I've heard offy manifold + 390 carb + headers + lokar kickdown...another person mentioned nitrous but that sounds kind of risky to me. Thanks for your time & advice!
Russ

There are lots of different directions you can go with this car. It being your first older car, I strongly recommend "step number zero" is to buy these three books.

There are a lot of threads along the lines of how to plan and execute a successful build-up on a project like yours. It's a good idea to read 'em. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Then ask your next round of questions!

_________________
一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

After getting the books, the next step is to evaluate what sort of resources (money, time, and technical skill) you can put into this project. A Super Six, exhaust, and HEI ignition might fit a cheap and easy buildup, but wouldn't give you a huge power gain. Likewise, a turbo and EFI project can make a huge amount of power, but can take a lot of time and effort.

_________________
"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

Thanks for the links. I'm looking for easy bolt on applications to start out...preferably ones I can continue to use as I develope my skills

Unfortunatley if you want the most horsepower and don't care about gas it will be cheaper to put a v8 in. I know most people here cringe at me saying this, but the fact is we have a small engines and "bolt-ons" only increase a certain percentage. So a 30% increase on a 225 is alot harder to see than on a 408.
So... there is a lot of stuff you can do that is bolt on's, offy is defintley the way to go. If all else fails you can easily convert one to EFI. Turbos are a very difficult road to go down, they produce insane numbers if dialed in correctly.
You can NA build the slant like Doug does for not terribly expensive and would probably be the best road to go down. I simply read some basic horsepower books, and realised the slant is a good cheap platform to learn on, so dive in.

Books are in the mail!