258 or 360?????

[chris486372]

Hi everyone i am new to the sight and I have a question maybe someone can help me with I am building a 85 CJ-7 for trails and maybe alittle rock crawling it is not really going to be driven on the road am I better off running a bored 258 with a mild cam or a pretty much stock 360?

[rick]

By the time you buy all of the adapters and do all the custom bits and pieces you will need with a 360, you are much better off to build a 4.7L (or 4.5, 4.6L...) stroker with a 4.0L block and a 258 crank. Everything is bolt in and you will make somewhere between 290 and 320 ft-lb torque, depending on how you do it and how much you spend. Of course, if I had a 360 laying in the garage I wouldn't be building a stroker. I guess it depends on what you are doing also - if mud is your thing, I think the 360 might be better for the top end. You can spend almost as much money building a 258 as to build a stroker, so you are better off building what you want from the start (trust me I learned this one the hard way). A stroker is also lighter than a 360, probably by a lot (maybe 100 lb?). Of course, if you are comparing costs to building a stroker and putting in a junkyard 360 that you don't rebuild, the stroker will cost more. It's just that you will spend the money on adapters and other doo dads to make it all work. Then when the 360 blows up you get to rebuild it, making the total cost higher...

See this thread for stroker info: stroking it


:shades:
rick