Building a good all around 360

Agustin CJ7

I looked in the serch option and didn't find much info on this.. I hope is not a really old subject... I have a CJ7 with the 304.. which went south last week.. so I bought a 360. I want to build it to have some extra power, but I need to stay in the safe side, not to radical. I want it to last some time!!! It comes with the Motorcarrft 2 barrel carb. Of what I've read, the 4 barrel version has about 20 more Hp's... If I ad a Torquer manifold/cam/carb, how much improvement can I expect? I already had headers, MSD, what else can I do to improve performance? Sorry for the newby question. :roll:

tufcj

Welcome to the board. :sa: The 360 in my CJ has been very dependable. The bottom end is stock. I got it used with about 60K miles. I had the crank turned .010/.010 just to be sure everything was right. Rods were checked for straightness and the big ends resized. Honed the cylinders, and put new Sealed Power rings on the original pistons. I used 1970 291C casting heads to bump the compression to around 9:1. The heads are mildly ported/polished, 3 angle valve job, the exhaust valves were enlarged to 1.68", positive valve seals. AMC V-8s resopnd VERY well to mild port work, it's money well spent. Cam is Edlebrock Performer. I started with a torker manifold, but the bottom end suffered. I'm running a Edelbrock Performer manifold now. You could also run an air gap, but they do have some cold weather issues. I installed Howell EFI on mine, which made a HUGE difference in off-road performance. Ignition is a Mallory Unilite. Horsepower is a conservative 325. I've put an additional 60K on it since the rebuild, and it's never let me down. It uses less than a quart of oil between it's 3000 mile oil changes. I've got a 60K mile virgin 401 sitting in my garage that will eventually go in the Jeep, but the 360 has been so good that I really can't justify tearing it out. Bob tufcj

Agustin CJ7

Thanks Bob! That is about what I'm looking for... 300 reliably horsis reagarding oiling issues, is it mandatory to do modifications in order to improve it or could I live long with out them? Then.. FI is out of budgget. If you could recomend carbs, it will be really good for the ol 360 Again, thanks for the info!

tufcj

My 360 has the valley line but nothing else. For a low RPM engine, I would probably just go with drilling the smaller holes in the cam bearings (that mod wasn't in print when I built mine). I've seen lots of factory cam bearings break down, causing low oil pressure, so it's cheap insurance to have them replaced anyway.

Mine pushes around 55 PSI over 1500 RPM and idles at about 20 PSI (both hot). I have MC's remote filter and replacement pump cover, but I haven't had time to install it yet.

I had good luck with a Holley 600 on mine. I did upgrade it with off-raod float bowls, a "whistle" and slosh tubes. The only time I had a problem with it was a quick drop of the front end (like dropping off a ledge), or extreme nose down attitudes. I think the truck avenger series of carbs have all those mods out of the box. Fuel injection is worth it. You might check with www.howell-efi.com , for just a little more than the cost of a new avenger, you could buy the harness, tbi adapter, and chip from them. The rest is 92-95 GM parts (TBI, MAP, temp sensors, and ECM) that you can get at a junkyard. Mine starts better, idles smoother, gained about 1 MPG, and even runs upside down (don't ask how I know #-o ).

Bob
tufcj