Last weekend I thrashed on my friends 73 Dodge Dart. Although it ran well there was several things happening under the hood on the 318 that really bugged me. The ancient Weiand intake manifold was a piece of junk,It didn't fit well and it needed a carb spacer for the Holley 570 street Avenger carb to work. Which caused a ton of problems making the carb linkage and Auto trans kickdown work properly, And caused hood clearance problems.The cheap Taiwan chrome valve covers were warped and were constantly leaking.
The previous owner rigged up this train wreck carb linkage, The Auto trans kickdown linkage wasn't even working properly. Torqueflite transmissions need the kickdown function to work otherwise it will greatly shorten the lifespan of the trans. The Weiand intake was a pain to install,several bolt holes were hard to get at with a socket and the carb spacer probably killed a little low end torque on this 318 which it really can't afford to lose.
We replaced the Weiand intake with an Edelbrock performer. The Edelbrock is basically a stock replacement manifold, It will allow us to ditch the carb spacer and use stock carb and kickdown linkage. The only hassle was finding all the right pipe plugs to get the Edelbrock ready for installation.
The Edelbrock manifold installed easy and solved all of our linkage and hood clearance issues. Mopar Performance cast aluminum valve covers (made in USA) with cork gaskets replaced the leaky Taiwan chrome junkers,Cast aluminum valve covers don't warp like the stamped steel stockers and have superior sealing ability. We also recurved the distributor for good measure and did some additional tuning. The engine now pulls 20 inches of vacuum to keep the power brakes happy. This probably isn't the end of the 73 dart saga but thats all for now.
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