Hello all, I am new here, though I have driving my 72 Swinger for 11 years and over 90,000 miles. I call her the Blackbyrd and I bought her in '99 from the proverbial little old lady who was the original owner, and who saved the original bill of sale and window sticker. It had what seemed to be a very genuine 73,000 original miles, judging by the shape of the car. As a lot of people know, buying a car from little old ladies isnt always a good thing, as the engine had suffered somewhat from making only short trips. Nonetheless, the car provided reliable transportation for a good while, with me doing my best to keep up on maintenance, esp valve adjustment. She was always cold blooded and the choke never worked right, so I mastered the art of driving Blackbyrd cold by doing a sort of spastic quivering dance with my throttle foot. Any ill which is spoken of the Holley 1920 should never be directed at the accelerator pump, at least on my car ,as it worked magnificently through 90K miles and made the "spastic foot dance" an option for making the car drivable right after a cold start. I got so good at it that a passenger would never catch on unless he watched my foot...




After a time, constant use and exposure to the elements ( I never had a garage) took their toll on Blackbyrd and now she looks more like a rat rod than a pristine survivor. But I like her patina and plan on keeping her this way for a good while. Theres no rust and whats left of the paint is still covering up the steel so I figure its all good. I did the purple primer stripes and roof a couple of months ago. She ran pretty good up untill about 6 months ago when the back cylinder died and she became a slant 5. Actually she still ran pretty good as a slant 5. Better than youd ever think and if you snatched the column shifted auto down to first at about 20 mph it would still snap your neck...

Anyway, Blackbyrd is getting a heart transplant, I'm putting this baby in


As you can see its got the dual 3 into 1 header, and the Clifford "short ram" 4 barrel ( which is heated with engine coolant ). I have a lot of ducumentation on this engine and it was owned by a friend of a friend, who ran it in a '73 D100 truck and reported that it delivered torque almost on par with a big block V8. The engine was built 3 years ago, has just over 1000 miles on it, and came with an impressive amount of paperwork. Built by a well known an reputed local shop, it has over 1500 U.S. dollars worth of machine work alone, with all the major components having been magnafluxed and the assembly blueprinted along with a port and polish on the head, which was fitted with stainless valves and shaved .100. It has a custom grind race cam with a 250 deg. total duration and close to .400 lift thats supposed to give 321 HP at peak and make good power and torque from 1500 to 4000 RPM. I understand that only 5 of these cams were made as of 2007. I also understand that this engine was built with no expense spared and that the owner reported that it certainly felt like the engine delivered everything the cam promised. It reportedly kicked butt in the truck and was only taken out because this guy still had some unexplainable fixation for big block V8s. If it did so well in a truck, it ought to be murder in the Blackbyrd. He said it had eaten a few street driven small blocks for lunch.

One question though, Ive heard eleswhere that the opinion of some is that the 7 1/4 rear axle is sufficient for any slant 6 buildup but Im not sure about that with this engine. This thing is a monster that makes a stock hyper pak and a 273 for that matter look weak by comparison. Im going to be running alongside or a little faster than the new 300 HP V6 Mustangs! Not so sure a little peanut rear is going to handle that kind of power....Opinions?

Oh well , picture posting failed. Sorry about that.

needs to end in a ".jpg" to work, welcome to the boards!