megabyte5689 said:
what do you mean by air police? Ya I've read about strokers.
Air Police, Smog Nazis - whatever you want to call them. Local "Air Quality Management" people that like to stick a sniffer up your car's arse on a regular basis (here, it's every two years. Unless your vehicle is around 1975 or older, then don't bother. And, they're thinking about a 20-year "rolling limit" - between twenty years ago and "classics," they want to stick a sniffer up there every year. Bugger...)
Better and faster acceleration means low-end torque, which means moving more air at lower crankshaft speeds. Later heads "breathe" better than earlier heads (the #7120 - 1991-1995 - is typically regarded as best,) and a stroker increases airflow at all RPM ranges. Use a lightweight crankshaft (later 258) to increase throttle response.
Catch is - with a head swap, you'll have to swap intakes, throttle bodies, and the like as well. The later heads flow better because the intake ports were raised about 5/8" to lessen the angle that the air charge has to make. This means that the RENIX (1987-1990) intake won't "bolt right up" to the HO (1991-2007) heads - it can be adapted, but it's a fair bit of work to get it all to line up right and bloody
stay put!
You can also think about a camshaft swap - but several of the AMC inline six performance cams are listed as "not compatible with computer-controlled vehicles." I've yet to determine if this means that the computer just flat won't work, or if it will be hard-pressed to adapt to the different valve timing events, or if it just means that it won't pass smog (and is therefore not a problem in most of the country.) I've been working on research for
Swappology of late, and haven't gotten that bit of research done yet (it's a planned update for the
Power Manual - probably get to work on it right after I finish getting information for
Chapter Seventeen - Fuels together. Information on both books is on my site, and the link is in my sig.)
I've also heard that you can get rather "crisper" part-throttle response with a bored-out throttle body, but I've no personal experience to back this up. Yet.