How big of a pain is it to swap a carburetor intake onto a magnum 318. Will the gauges still work? What else has to be done to make it work?

 

What's the point? You're going backwards

 

There's more than one way to do it. Do you want to use your stock fuel pump or go with the old mechanical pump?

 

Not sure about the fuel pump, which way would be easier? And it's a lot cheaper and easier to build a carb motor than a throttle body. Also what cam would I order for this? A magnum or la cam?

 

All depends on what you want from the engine.

 

You have a magnum engine, so stick with magnum cams.

Temp, and oil pressure gauges would still work, but, none of the rest of them. They all go thru the PCM. Not to mention TCC and Overdrive are also PCM controlled.

Voltage regulator is in the PCM. That can be worked around.

Ignition is controlled by PCM. You will need a different distributor as well, plus whatever else to run the coil.

I think, by the time you get everything working properly, it will cost just as much, if not more, to make it run with a carb, than it would be just getting some tuneable standalone system to run the engine, that you can program yourself.

 

Well it's a 5 speed, so the tranny isn't a problem. All I'd be doing is maybe some 10:1 pistons, cam, intake, Odessa monster heads, and carb. If I did that with the tb I'd have a $700 intake, $300 tb, $4-500 tuner, where I could have the intake, carb, cam and heads for about 1500

 

What is the 300 tb you speak of

 

Big gulp from Hughes, was 300 if I remember right

 

If you're gonna do all that, why not just get a 360, build it, swap engines, and sell the 318?
More cubes->more power.