1973 Plymouth Fury big block swap

  I often have a hard time getting to sleep at nights. I attribute it to my heavy diet coke habit and my overall "night owl" tendencies. My chronic insomnia has given my mind lots of time to wander as I toss and turn. The byproducts of my insomnia are a string of brilliant epiphanies and half-baked schemes that end in disaster,this next story falls somewhere in between.

  When I wrecked my 76 dodge powerwagon I bought a 73 dodge truck as a parts donor to repair it.  The 73 parts truck was equipped with a low deck 400 big block with a fragged fuel pump, which I pulled before the 73 was sent unmercifully to the crusher. At first the 400 took up floor space in the shop as I dreamed of building a 451 stroker engine out of it. Then I woke up and realized I'm poor and came up with another plan: I always thought full size C body mopars with small blocks were lame, and I owned a small block C body mopar. My 1973 Plymouth Fury was powered by a 360 small block, I modded it with an Edelbrock performer intake and a 600 cfm Holley carb and a dual exhaust. The modifications I made helped the car pick up some much needed power because the thing is damn heavy and nothing moves a heavy car better than big block torque, And I just happened to have a spare big block laying around.

    With limited funds a full rebuild on the 400 was not an option, Instead I replaced key components for the most reliability and performance. I started by scraping and scrubbing off the 30 plus years of crusted pennzoil frosting and stripping it of everything I wasn't going to use. I replaced the timing chain,oil pump,fuel pump,valve seals and threw a gasket kit at it. I also added a windage tray and a swap meet sourced aluminum 4 barrel intake manifold,I used some 1970 HP exhaust manifolds to replace the truck log style units. I recurved the distributor and finally painted it to make it pretty.

  Then I let it set for about a year as I frantically worked on the four other project cars (I often say I have project car ADD as I often jump from one car to another for no reason)  The project was jump started after I sold the aforementioned 360 in the Fury which was still in the car. I battled the sweltering july heat and a swarm of wasps that took up residence under the huge plymouth. And pulled the 360 from it's home for over 38 years.

  I had the engine done but I still needed a transmission, I reused the 727 torqueflite from the truck.
chrysler 400 engines have a cast crank and are externally balanced. That means the torque converter has balance weights welded to it from the factory so I'm limited on converter selection so I stayed with the stocker. I drained the torqueflite,adjusted the bands,and installed a fresh filter and pan gasket. I'm about 90% sure the tranny will work.

  I stole the kickdown linkage and some assorted brackets from the small block torqueflite.The tranny cooler lines from the small block worked on the big block which was a relief.

   With everything bolted together I dropped in the 400/727 combo with motor mounts from my junk pile. I use an engine tilter which works trick when installing an engine by yourself. I was able to reuse the old driveshaft but the exhaust wasn't even close to matching up, So later I'll have to make a trip to the muffler shop.

  It took several weeks of scrounging to make everything come together,The pulleys came off the small block, I got the alternator bracket from mancini racing,It was originally chrome but I scuffed it and painted it black. The biggest pain was rewiring the ignition,since the distributor on a big block is on the front I had to lengthen all the wires. Other than that Its mostly junkyard parts. The first fire was kinda anti-climactic due to a wiring issue that had no power to the key. With the electrical snafu fixed it fired right up and ran pretty snappy the only other problem was a small gas leak. With the cold weather rapidly closing in I still need to get the exhaust fixed and find the right power steering bracket. I'm not really sure I'll be able to get in a road test before the snow flies. But a mild winter might fix that problem (crosses fingers) So stay tuned for that. Next summer hopefully I'll be doing bodywork on the Fury and installing a 8 3/4 rearend with a 3.23:1 sure grip.

  I thought this was going to be cheap! After crunching the numbers this thing really nickel and dimed me bad! And I'm not finished spending. All told I spent about $650 to make all this happen.