Suffice to say that we're looking at one desperately underpowered motor home.
Doesn't mean it's not very hip - but I recall touring the Black Hills in a VW Vanagon, 7 people on board.
You could count the guardrail posts as we slowly slinked by.
But back to the Dodge.
Am I to judge by your handle that we'll be seeing a Poly head Mopar under the hood?
Those vans were much lighter than you would think, about 4500lbs fully laden. All aluminum monocoque center section with lexan windows and a fiberglass nose and tail. With the kitchen/bathroom removed and all the tanks empty they weigh in around 3400lbs. In other words, actually lighter than the car! They actually kind of haul ass... you know... for a 22ft RV with an air cooled engine...Till you hit 50mph and the aerodynamics come into play. Then it's like 70mph down a 6% grade with the throttle on the floor.
Something else that should be mentioned is that... with 12" of foam and blankets and 20ft of distance between you and the engine, you don't hear it at all.. i mean not a single bit! Along with that slip-n-slide powerglide trans in it, it's like driving an electric car. Then there is the crazy crazy big windshield on it. The only way to get a better view is to be on a motorcycle. You just can't appreciate the view out of the front of one of those till you've been in one. Then of course you realize that you're riding in what amounts to a canoe shell at 55mph and that the crumple zones are your knees. One wrong move and you'll be enjoying the view of a honda in your lap.
But back on the dodge, yes. Just ordered one of Chrysler Powers brandy new small production run, air gap style intake for a 318 poly. Next step after that is fitted is to start adapting the LA mopar paxton kit to the poly. This actually fixes several problem areas. My era of poly had no harmonic balancer. But if I add an LA one, which is easy to get, I get some pully misalignment. Well I'm not keen on the generator, would rather have alternator, but that's a pain to replace a well. BUT the paxton kit has it's own alternator bracket built onto the blower bracket! I can knock in a couple of holes on the blower bracket and the drilled/tapped holes on the heads of the poly will then be usable, move some spacers around and make new ones here and there, and viola, I get an alternator, spaced for LA style pulleys, which then allows me to run an LA harmonic balancer, and a saginaw power steering pump intended for an LA application, and probably the LA engines aluminum water pump. And I get boost... because, freakin' everthing is better with boost.
This engine received a rebuild in the early 90's and then got parked. it's in excellent condition, no visible wear in the bores (I had the heads off to be sure), even some of the hone cross hatching is still visible! One problem.... they used LA 318 pistons in it.. reducing it's compression ratio to only 8.2:1 (if my math is right... I own a set of depth mics, i'm fairly confident.) So it's rip apart an engine that isn't destroyed just to uprate the compression, so I can destroy it, or, boost it till it detonates.....No reason to throw pistons away that don't have holes in them! (yet)
I still need to find a header shop to make some headers for me, or, buy a tig machine and roll my own. At this point, with the hassle of trying to make this work, I may make my own. That said, I keep getting this idea that ends up with a header that would require removal of a torsion bar to install. If it were a drag car I would have just cut holes in the fenders and dumped it over board out the wheel wells high and mighty style....
Anyway, intake is scheduled to arrive next week.... $600 for that damn thing...