My 79 Tbird is a monster off the line. It's been de smogged, still has cats with true dual exhausts, and I swapped out the 2.47 rear gears for a nice 3.70 posi unit. The 351M really woke up with the gear swap.
I'm styling a 78, my daily driver. Didn't run any better than yours when I bought it 18 months ago. Every payday bought a lug nut, today she's sporting 15x7 rims 215/70/15 tires front, 15x10 rims with 295/50/15 tires back. Hooker headers, Cherry Bomb salutes no cross overs awesome stereo sound. Currently building a C6 for her I'll have it in, in no time. Then on to the engine.
Some old guy I knew had a super clean 1977 bird. It had a 302 engine. I put a cleveland engine in that car. He said nobody was passing him anymore. When he picked up the car he drove it to a muffler shop with only exhaust manifolds. That was back in the 80's.
I havn't tried to do a burn out in my 77 bird with the 400. I have rebuilt the carb and have it well tuned for better performance, screw that stock timing. Its amazing how much 38 degrees of total timing woke that boat up (and of course other carb tuning and what nots). It will set you back in the seat off the line now. Hope to start doing more upgrading this summer. It has been my daily driver for almost 7 years.
i know this comment is 5 years old so prob a good chance your cars is done lol, i have a 77 351 windsor, have not got to burn out stage just yet. does yours pull em easy. im 18 so dont know anything about cars, i bought it for my dad and he says it will
I had one of them about 20 years ago. Another haul away free car. It wouldn't do a burn out either it just popped back thru the carb. So on our typical Friday night we took it to the old 4 wheeling spot, dropped a brick on the gas pedal, blew the motor...then dropped a match and watched it burn while we laughed and drank beer. Still sitting there just a rusty cage.
Stock 400 with factory exhaust with knocked out cats. Plans to do great things with it in the long run, but school is taking most of my time and money.
+Brandon Petroski How quiet is it running? I'm in the same boat, in college and can't afford to do much. The one in the video is the exhaust strait off the cats, so it ends right below the firewall. And I was fortunate enough to find a holly two barrel 500cfm carb to slap on it.
My bird is a 77 Town Landau. So it has practically every option aside from t-tops or a sunroof. My bird has an aftermarket thrush muffler that is surprisingly quiet. It has a low rumble when you're by the rear, but it's nothing significant. The bad rod bearings make more noise when it's warming up than the exhaust. I want to drop a built 460 in mine, full 2 1/2 inch dual exhaust, grab a rear end out of a 77 Lincoln for the discs and posi, install some air shocks, cragers, do bodywork, and paint it dark jade green with a little metal flake. So essentially a full on street machine look. Thats the vision at least. I had my heart set on rebuilding the 400 because people always shit on that motor for being a smog era block, however they can be built for really great torque numbers for a small block. After thinking on it, I figured why not just go all in, and drop some time of monster 429 or 460 in her.
