I like hemis.........Not more than buicks, but a muscle car is a muscle car, and the hemi powered cuda's are one of a few. Lookin good. My opinion is keep the 340, or put in a 440 6 pack. Oh, and I should not forget the most important thing, put a 4 speed in with a Hurst shifter nob:3gears: :TU: :beer just an opinion or 2. -Cody
Pistol grip shifters in Mopigs are definatly bad-ass. 340s can be quite the power plant. 340 six pack screaming at 7500.... bangin' gears, :3gears: I was almost a mopar man. o No:
I say pull the 340 and save it, install a Honda lawn mower engine, lower it, tint the windows, put a $12,000 stereo in it, two huge fart tubes, a 6 foot wing and some Japanese stickers. Then put it on ebay and sell it to some loser for $30,000. :laugh:
We just finished a 71 CUDA clone for a friend/customer, started with a 318/904auto a/c coupe and it's now a 440/4spd a/c coupe with 440 billboards in white. Painted/detailed both engine compartment and trunk. Finished w/new trunk pan, 1/4's, inner fender wells and more. We reinstalled a new white vinyl top to match, gilled fenders, new chrome magnum 500's w/15" BFG's, rear wing, chin spoilers and painted grill and front bumper (fiberglass not original elastometric but looks just as good). Refinished it in its' original B2-light metallic blue color. It's definately cool to view. Trailered it down to Venice Florida for the owner just a month back. The '71s are absolutely one of the hottest musclecars out there as far as pricing goes. If yours is a matching number 340 car then definately keep it that way. My other buddy just bought an orig.340/4 spd RUST bucket that is now in the shop getting new sheet metal and was offered $12,500 for it over the phone without seeing it and prior to any work being done. A 340 car done can be worth up to $40k. Also all the parts are readily available to do a 4 spd swap. If you need any info, feel free to ask. I'm not an expert by far but then again all the "experts" that we asked about things were only right half the time. And after a year of babysitting this car I'm surely a little wiser than before. Jim
This one was originally a 318. It has a split back bench seat and column shift automatic, don't see too many of those. It looks to have new quarters, so so work. It will need a new trunk pan, floors look good, I'll know more when it is stripped. Definitely will be adding the gilled fenders and 4-speed. Should I keep the bench seat? Finding an original style shifter will be hard. I may need a few tips down the road. Got any pictures of that '71?
the split bench is sort of rare and we really wanted to use ours but it will not fit with the orig type 4 spd. After welding in the aftermarket shift hump-nice repros- and installing the trans, the seat would have to be majorly modified so we had to get buckets. The e-body uses the shifter mount a few inches from the rear of the trans-the 69/70ish A-833's have two shifter mount locations-the b-bodys share the trans but use the more forward mount location. And the reverse sifter rod actually runsbehind and underneath the crossmember-all of this just pushes the shifter back and the handle curves back forward. Finding an orig shifter won't be hard, I have names and #'s for reasonable prices. We used the wiring from our column shift to rebuild a floor shift column which are often bad. I don't have pictures on this computer but will be working on it. jim btw what colors was your car originally?
I see...I see...a full roller with lightened crank capable of 9,000 rpm+ 340... No chrome or is it all in a box? If it were mine, I'd go chromeless, gloss black, slightly tinted windows and the only chrome is the dual exhaust tips.
looks like your Cuda has a lot of potential I am currently looking for a Mopar myself but everything I find is either too much $ or is a pile of junk
