I had a 318 in a 75 that got 15 with a high performance rebuild. I have a crate engine from Mopar now in Phoenix and it gets ten. Pulling a camper it gets ten and with a tail wind it gets ten & 1/4. TBI or EFI STAY with it or you'll pay dearly for it. If you don't have a good job and your wife does'nt either stay with the fuel injection it will save you enough to make an extra event every year. If I had the extra 3500 dollars I would change over my crate engine NOW, No questions asked. forget carbs

Phoenix, I just read the Avenger EFI install in Car Craft or Hot Rod (not sure which) and it was reasonably priced at $2k for a setup that will bolt exactly where a carb goes and got a nice little improvement in mileage vs. what the magazine guys could milk out of the carb they had (usually better than I could ever do! haha). Might be worth checkin out down the road

Thanks I might just google that . My wife is going to kill me if I don't stop working on the drive train and start working on the interior. I am more mechanic than interior decorator...

You and me both!!

As for MPG, I get pretty horrible with my van (its tuned for power, never been tuned for economy, lol) at about 7.5 to 8 mpg around town and upwards of 9 mpg on the freeway! She got 10mpg on the freeway a little while ago when my brother retarded the total timing a bit (was different heads than what I have now though, and was due to those heads sucking in oil a bit, lol) Having to spin 2900 rpm to go 60 hurts (the wallet) sometimes, lol.

I have stopped even thinking about the mileage my van gets. If I want to go some where and I have money to get there I will go, if not I don't! Until the engine starts running on just air or water it needs gas. We have been paying between $1.20 to $1.30 per litre(about 1 US quart/=$5.00gal) which is crazy but at least we can still buy it. lol!

ADRENALIN BY THE GALLON


Not much else matters!!

If your Dakota's 318 had a throttle body, it had TBI
(Throttle Body Injection).

CNG dual fuel kits are avail now. You can compress regular consumer piped in natural gas with a wall mounted unit in your garage or you can refill at stations. Commercial refill venues sell 1 GGE (gallon gas equiv) at half the price of gasoline - or less. The system uses a pressure reducing valve and supply fuel to your carb or EFI. a tank in the back holds say 12 GGE CNG. Burns clean too. Probably give up 5% HP, that's ok, I have more foot.

Natural gas is abundant and does not have to come from the middle east.

I am thinking miles per dollar, not miles per gallon.

Not true. If it was multi port injected, that means there is a throttle body to control air flow via the butterflies in the bottom of it (like on a modern hemi for example) and then fuel injectors at each runner individually, separate from the throttle body. Throttle body injected means the fuel injectors are mounted on the throttle body itself, basically a "smarter" carburetor that ran a wet manifold (fuel and air in manifold) and why MPI is preferred (individual injectors, but not necessarily individually fired injectors, aka batch fire, but a dry manifold mostly), and SMPI (sequential multi port injection) is even more desired as it truly runs a dry manifold and allows individual cylinder tuning per injector. Hope that clears that up for some and that I got it right, haha!

Thanks for the education! Everytime I think I've covered them all, I find a new way to showcase my stupidity