Options and worst case scenario
My son and I are weighing our options with this engine that we bought and the issues with trying to get the thing installed. The whole issue is that the motor has the Edelbrock round port heads. We had no idea of the challenges that this would create when we bought the engine, otherwise I would have passed on the opportunity, no matter how good the deal was.
It appears that the proprietary manifolds required to install a round port engine in a '67 will never materialize (I'm told "another 4 weeks, another 4 weeks, another 4 weeks"...). The car is just not fun to drive as it sits, with a dog of a motor that's likely not worth trying to improve as it's old and tired. It's got no power and is unreliable. I can't go with headers without converting from column shift to a floor shift. I'm not keen on doing that, as it has a rare tilt column and I'd hate to alter that.
So I'm trying to determine if it's worth switching to D-ports. This engine is built like I've never seen and I don't know if the roller cam and valvetrain from the Performer RPM heads can be used on a new pair of Performer D-ports or similar heads from another vendor. I'll probably be stuck with the round ports sitting on a shelf as I see that they are not that popular right now. I just want a servile engine with cast iron manifolds.
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