Help me decide.

[Dieselwrencher]

Hi everyone! I am having a real hard time trying to decide what the heck I want to do for a re power in my 40 Ford this winter. My wife is going to kill me, for real, if I put a diesel in it. Man, WTH? I really want to because I have nothing gas powered and have a lot of go fast diesel parts and I have an engine and tranny sitting here I could use.

So now I'm trying to decide what I want to do to this and make it enjoyable, and dependable, but still cool. I'm kind of stuck and have a lot of options. Let's see what you guys think too. Feel free to make any suggestions as well. I'm on a tight time frame and budget due to a new member of the family coming in February. Therefore, some of my options may not be able to happen real soon. The car will be being painted black with blue tri-color flames like are on it now because that is how my uncle had it for 30 years and that's how it should be to me.

I'm planning on some torque thrust wheels, more than likely chrome, and some air ride suspension at all 4 corners.

Here are a few options I have at my disposal right now.

Option 1: I could rebuild my 350 and TH400 that are in the car now and add a mild cam, a nice set of aluminum heads, a 6-71 supercharger, shift kit in the trans, and a stall. But the object here is to have a car we can take on Power Tour next year, and I'm sure the blown SBC won't be very nice on gas.

Option 2: My wife has a 95 firebird formula that she drove while it was over heating until it quit running. It still runs but the engine needs rebuilt and the heads are obviously questionable. She also backed into it and broke the LH door. It could use a paint job and has little things that need repaired before I could sell it. She likes the car, but would rather let me use the engine for the 40 and have me not spending a lot of money. My thoughts are mixed here. I know I will end up throwing at least $1500 at this car to rebuild an engine and maybe paint part of the car to sell it. The problem is, average trade in on this car is only $1800 and I see decent running and driving ones selling for $2500 all the time. So I'm thinking I could use the power train in my car and sell the car as a roller for around $1000 and break almost even. I have a spare cast headed LT1 I purchased for this car that needs head gaskets, but that still won't help the price I'd have to put in the firebird to sell it.

Option 3: I have a 351C with 4BL heads and a Torker 2 intake with an overdrive trans. I could rebuild these and try to attain 400hp, or put a 6-71 on it too. I've never really been a ford man, so IDK on this one.

Option 4: I know coming up with the money will be the hardest part for this one. I could purchase a LS whatever and put a turbo on it. There are a lot of factors here and IDK if the car would be done by spring, so this might not be an option for me, but may be in the future.

Any input or ideas are appreciated because I can't really decide. I always have ideas coming in and out of my head, and most of those don't involve spark plugs. I was really leaning hard on installing a 6.0 PSD in it, but I don't want to hack this car up. At most I might install a 2" recessed firewall to make it easier to work on. Here are some pics of the car.