Dear Car Craft,

  I was reading through what is in this month's magizine and saw this Battle of the Titans... I saw that a 350 Chevy, 351 Ford, and a 360 Mopar was going to be included in the competition with a budget of 2,500 dollars.  It's a great idea ,but your forgetting one thing, the AMC 360.  That is if your not scared of an AMC!  I have a perfectly good $100 junkyard 360 that would love to be included in this compitition.  AMC's have great factory heads.. that flow around 235 cfms cast, they also have the .904 inch lifter diameter, that likes big cam profiles.  They have strong blocks, that have a very high nickel content, so the bores in the block wear much slower than other motors.  So the amc has a lot of power potential and would make a durable steet motor in this competition.  And can be built cheaply...using factory parts.  I think it would give the others in the competition a run for their money!

My Dad and myself have built a couple AMC motors.  They have proven their selves well, in our budget and on the Drag strip.  Our first motor was the 401 that we just rebuilt with a torker intake, .480 lift comp. cam, 9.2 comp, and a 750 dp and we ran 7.7's in the 1/8 mile....that is almost 12 flat in the quarter. That is with stock heads, valves, rockers, crank, rods, block.  about  $1,800.  On drag radial tires in a 3,200 pound       74' grem. with full interior.  

We then bought a 70' 390 motor for 300 dollars that had 10.2 comp. from the factory. the engine had very little ring groove, due to the high nickel blocks ..so we left the stock cast pistons in it, stock forged rods, stock forged crank, ported the stock heads in our garage, left the valves in it, put new bearings and rings in, a torker intake , a .541 lift comp cam, R. Rockers and a 750 dp holley and ran a best of 7.42 with a 1.65 60-ft ....mid 11's in the quarter with about a 2,000 dollar motor.

We also built a 360 with stock every thing except for a torker intake, cam, set of badger cast pistons and ran 7.80's

We have know taken the 390 out of my dad's car to get serious.  And building it with Indy heads that flow 347 cfms, Indy intake, 1050 dominator, a Crane solid roller.....670 lift, 11.3 compresion Venolla pistons, stock rods, stock crank....fully balanced to make over 650 hp and over 600 pounds of torque and turn it to 7,500 rpms on 93 octane.  It should run in the mid to high 6's in the eight, mid 10's in the quarter, if we can ever hook at the track in our stock appearing Big Bad Orange 74' Gremlin.

If you want to take the chance, give me a ring and I will get you a AMC 360 to put in this competition or will build one....within the guide lines!

HEY!!!

This guy is right!  I'll admit I'm a Mopar guy, but the the AMC crew need to be represented!!  For a long time now, this genre has been ignored, but with the new technology and interest, the AMC stuff has become a force to deal with.  Sure, like the Mopes, they aren't as "popular" as the overly repeated and done GM crap, but they make big power & torque.

Give it a shot!!! We may ALL be surprised!!

Sounds great to me! While they are at it, why not throw in a 350 Buick, 350 Olds, 350 Pontiac, 351C, and 360 FE? Didn't Cadillac make a 368? Weren't the older 350 Caddy's actually Olds engines or did Cadillac make a 350? They made a 331 and 365 back in the late '50s- early '60s too I think. Build them, dyno them and then track test them would be more than reason enough for the subscription. That would be a good 6-24 months worth of very interesting comparisons to play around with. If my subscription didn't run out until 2009, I'd definately subscribe to read about that. Who wouldn't? In fact, I think I may even e-mail that idea to them.

I'm in agreance except calling the GM stuff crap.  I can't wait to thow a good intake and carb on my AMC.  Although I will still like my chevy just as much.  I'd also like to see some others resurected for a build off of sorts,  Although budget building sort of restrics less produced models from compeating on a level playing feild.  Otherwise I'd like to see a modern build of a Packard or stude.  Just because for there time they were Titans.  Maybe a little desoto Hemi VS the 5.7 both with professional builders of course.  Just to see or read rather.  

I am going to agree on the comment, "they aren't as "popular" as the overly repeated and done GM crap, but they make big power & torque!"       

Because some one i know has a stroked small block 383 with 13 to 1...a bigger....solid cam, better super victor intake, aftermarket heads, and he is running 8.0's!  We are runing 7.40's with our rebuild 390 with 10.2 to 1 with a smaller hyd. cam, torker intake, and the original heads!  So do the math, we are running 6 tenths faster than him on pump gas, that would be nearly a second on the quarter mile!

383 Chevy                                    390 AMC      

aftermarket crank                        factory crank

aftermarket rods                          factory rods

aftermarket iron heads               original factory heads

13 to 1 compression                     10.2 to 1 compression

Bigger Solid cam                          Smaller hyd. cam

Super Victor intake                        Torker intake

456 gears                                            4.10

mt slicks                                              bfg drag radials

8.0's in 1/8                                      7.40's in 1/8

race gas                                               pump gas

$6,000                                                 $2,000

Chevy                                                     AMC

  So you tell me that I shouldn't believe that AMC is better than the overrated Chevy!  AMC's Have better flowing heads from the factory, higher amounts of nickel in the blocks, larger lifter bore diameters, all 390 and 401 amc's have forged cranks and rods from the factory.

Hey,  Did you watch the Wheelie Contest on Speed Vision.  It was open to every one, so it must have been won by some chevy's or ford's, but no it wasn't.  It was won by a AMC Spirit and an AMC Gremlin and they won with amc motors,  not a Chevy!

We are talking about a 1,300 hp AMC Gremlin! You may have seen it on one of the latest issues of CC.

You could take an amc 360 and chevy 350.  Build them with parts as close as possible, like put air-gap intakes on them, a cam with the same specs, the same compression, the same carb.  Along with their factory heads, crank, rods, and blocks.  And the AMC would out perform the over-rated and over published chevy Small Block!

If you want to prove me wrong, convence car craft to add the amc 360 to the contest.  And you will see the results.

The results will suprise you!

Why are you attacking me my first car was a gremlin when I was 9 my dad bought it off one of his troops I have a wagoneer limited on the lift right now.  I was taking ofense to the calling GM crap.  There are people running respectable times in many vehicles, one factor being power to weight ratio.  Another major factor is the combination of parts and the RPM range and gear ratio with wich it runs, especially if one is set up for the quarter, and the other is set up for the 8th.  But again why am I beeing attacked, I made no offense to AMC I just down think theres a need to down another brand, esecially since I have a few of them.  

Sounds great to me. Anything new would be cool.  

Hard to tell much about the comparison you mentioned between the Chevy 383 and the AMC 360. There are so many factors that could affect the performance of an engine. I bet the chevy could have used parts that don't work well together and/or not have been built properly, not to mention the weight and traction of the vehicle that the motor went into. I won't argue that the AMC would make more power than the Chevy with nearly identical parts as you mentioned, but I'd hardly call a sb Chevy overrated. Say the AMC heads do flow better in stock form than the Chevy heads, I bet that would make it the only make of sb stock heads that do flow better than Chevy's. Taking that advantage and throwing in the better lifter size and we'll say the steel crank (even though in milder engines, especially those using the factor heads, it's of no advantage), the Chevy still has two huge non-mechanical advantages over the AMC....part availability and price! If it is such crap, why didn't it go under years ago instead of AMC? That being said, not only do I like to see AMC stuff in CC (or anywhere for that matter), but I'd love to own an AMC powered AMC. Other than Pacers, Gremlins (4 & 6 cylinders) and Jeeps, I can only remember seeing 2 AMC's on the road in all of my 28 years. One was a rough, unkept Javalin and the other was a very nice, fully restored AMX that rarely got driven (oddly enough from my hometown, though I only saw the guy drive it a few times).

I am not attacking you, am trying to prove my point that the amc 360 is a great engine for this "Battle of the Titans" and we see build ups of 350's, 383's and 400's all the time.  We know all about chevys.  But never build ups on 360's

He has a good combination.  A rotating assembly from scat to displace 383 cubes with a set of 13 to 1 pistons. 

He revs his to 7,000, so it has a good bottom end!

And he is pulling the tires an inch or two so that is not a problem

we are reving just to 6200 6300

I am not attacking you, I am attacking the common articles on chevy. Sorry, i just got carried away with it.

It's cool if you do any EFI stuff you should definatley keep us informed, I need much better gas milage in the wagoneer if it is to be the family car.

you mentioned that the amc heads (if they outflowed chevy) would be the only small block factory head to do so.....wrong.

Fords Tunnelport 302's, or the canted valved boss 302's and 351 clevelands.  massive airflow.   I am not sure about chrysler but their heads had the best factory valve angle of the big 3, at 18 degrees as opposed to chevy's 23 degrees.

Your so corny sometimes.  

I stand corrected. I wasn't really counting rare or uncommon heads. It's not like you can find some tunnel ports in the junkyard on an old 302. The Cleveland heads were exactly made for the Windsor block either. They aren't a mere bolt-on head. Now I'm sure with bigger vavles and good porting that there are several heads that could equal or surpass a set of SB Chevy heads with bigger valves and porting. I was just refering to more common factory stock heads. I bet with the bigger vavles and porting, the Chrysler heads might have the advantage with that better valve angle.

what did I say now?

Don't remember, gettin old.