440 - Best Intake & Carb???

[Adrian Worman]

Thats a good plan for the time being, stick a proper sized carb on there & spend some time tuning it. They are easy carbs to tune, have excellent road manners, get an Edelbrock tuning kit, only about $40, invaluable for getting it set up nice.
Get yourself a decent AFR gauge installed & invest in either dyno or track time to get in dialled in.

My Challenger runs easy late 12's on a 440 with totally crap 452 heads & a softer cam than that, but I ditched my Eddy 800 for a Speed Demon 850 DP & knocked 2/10ths off after jetting.

That engine you have should be putting your B body into the 11's...........

 

[moper]

If it were me, I would replace the .557" with the .528" MP cam, and replace the intake with the RPM. Keep the Holley. I think the cam is too much for the heads and the static compression you have. You want a cruiser, you bought a semi mis-matched milder drag engine. Change it to lower rpm and flatten the torque peak. Then run a milder stall convertor and enjoy it. It will be night and day better than the worn 383.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

After talking to my stall speed torque convertor guy, I decided to go ahead with a cam/intake swap. With an automatic trans, my 440 engines current set up just wasn’t going to work without using a 3500 stall and changing my rear gears to 4.10 so the converter would lock up on the highway. And that would leave me screaming at 3050rpm at 60mph, which isn’t ideal so I think it’s a much better plan to just do a cam/intake swap and turn this high rpm screamer into a low end torque monster. So I installed a Hughes Whiplash cam and an Eddy Performer RPM intake.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

We broke in the cam at my cousin’s garage and noticed it didn’t sound right when we were done and let the rpms come down to an idle. So I trailered it to the guy who did the engine work and he quickly realized it was only running on 4 cylinders, and making an excessive amount of clatter under the valve covers. Sure enough he removed the covers and 3 out of 4 push rods went right through the rockers on one side and 1 of 4 on the other side. Attached is a video of it running on 4 cylinders after the half an hour cam break in process.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

The engine builder replaced the bent push rods, and replaced the original rockers with some expensive crane rockers. It’s running better now, or at least on 8 cylinders anyway. It still needs to gone through and have the timing set up, carb, etc. I can tell you this, the Whiplash cam does have an extremely radical idle. Here is a video of the stock 383 running with long tube headers, 3” dual exhaust, h-pipe, and flow master super 10 mufflers.



Here is a video of the 440 with the exact same exhaust system. It’s a little hard to tell in the videos, but the 383 was surprisingly quiet and reserved with this exhaust system. The 440 however is insanely loud. It honestly sounds like open headers, it sounds like a drag car. Every time I fire it up my neighbors all come to their windows to see what the noise is all about. Apparently it actually shakes the windows of the house directly across from us, lol.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

Here are some pics of the 440 Installed.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

Add a little Amsoil.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

440 going in.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

New 440 vs old 383.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

440 ready to go in.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

383 out.

 

[Mc MOPAR]

383 coming out.

 

[hot metal]

Whiplash cam certainly sounds hard!!...my CC 290@.050 sft cam in my 440 sounded tamer in the race car