so i have been reading and looking around, and i gotta say wtf!?

318s from 30 years ago when built with new heads and carbs and cams can put down 300-400hp but i cant get 300hp out of my new age 318? wtf....have we not learned anything over the past 30 yrs? im just angry. seems so easy on those old motors, but sooo hard on our's.

 

You're right. My 1995 5.9 had no more power than my 1974 5.9 and the gas mileage was probably better on my 1974. You can spend thousands on heads.TB,cam, headers etc on your 5.2(this includes labour costs ..unless you can do all the installs yourself) trying to get to the 300 horse area.
Now I did that route with my 5.9 and can tell you I would have been far better off to take those thousands and do one of two things. Bought a 408 short block or a supercharger. Either that or save your money for a new Ram Hemi 380 horse. My two bits worth!

 

You can make big numbers with these motors it just costs more

 

We had good gasoline back in those days also, not this crap they produce now.
We could run 10.5 or 11 to 1 compression ratio with pump gas and quick ignition advance.

 

You can still get the same power levels out of todays engines, you just have to work at it a little harder. The computer controlled everything tends to complicate matters. Not to mention the limited selection of aftermarket parts for the FI engines. Look at how many carb manifolds you can find for the same motors........ in many different configurations, and how many FI manifolds are there? Two? Three?

 

Sure you can, bump the compression, get better heads and port them, an aggressive cam and spin it faster than 5200RPM and it'll do the same thing a LA motor will

 

Emissions standards are a beyotch.