Musclecar & Hi-Po Engines Chrysler 273 . 318 . 340 & 360

Another worthy compilation from the pages of Car Craft and Hot Rod, this time dealing with the LA engines from 1963 to 1979. Development and description of the 273 are the lead-off article, and there's even an article on hopping this baby V-8 up. Like its somewhat bigger brother the 318, hot rodders pretty much ignored it in favor of cubic inches. If you have or want to know about the mods for the 340, this is the book to have. A major part of it deals with the 340, which was quite the rod in its day. Special parts, sturdier engine pieces, and other points about the 340 are covered here, as well as a great deal of modifying.Unfortunately for the enthusiast, the 340 was in production only a few years. It's as scarce as hen's teeth these days, but if you want an idea as to what was done with these motors back in the day, this is a useful manual to have. How brief was the 340's glory.There are tune-up articles here too, for those who don't necessarily want to rod their Mopars. The article on the 318 is excellent, as it covers tuning and the cure for a couple of little foibles that evergreen engine had. There's even some stuff on hopping it up, with interchangeability of parts and bolt-on items to make the plain vanilla 318 hum. For the somewhat more serious owner, there's even a bit of block and head mods he can do that require a little more machining.The 360 isn't ignored, although it doesn't get the space the 340 does. Unlike the 318 and the 340, it has no tune-up article. Perhaps the thinking was that the 360, as a direct descendant of the 273, would be similarly tuned. It does have a bolt-on econo hop-up for the 360 with a lot of info packed into five pages. Note: the magnums aren't covered in these articles.There are still scads of 318s and 360s around. This book could have its uses yet, and I enjoyed reading it like a regular book. These engines are worthy additions to Hot Rods' "Great American Engines" series.

This book covers some articles from back in the day about the mopar engines. Much of this has been forgotten. I didn't realize a lot of the parts and part numbers. And,it shows some tuning adjustments that i wasn't aware of,or shown in other books. So, overall,its a good book to have on hand.

Great book for a "newbie" that isn't sure what he wants to do with his Mopar small block.

I am an engine novice and I thought the explanations could be better and the pictures were not of a very good quality and were not really helpful or relative.

I ordered this book on small block mopar's. but when the order came it had the wrong book, the book i received was on chrysler hemi's.