Lots of good advice here. However one point has been overlooked,and that is the final drive ratio,the rearend.By far the cheapest way to go to get good performance is to use a smallblock Chevy V/8,with the 350 being the most popular.Yeah you can beef up an inline six to run pretty decent but you will have an arm and a leg tied up in it.Next thing back is the trans. and I highly reccomend an overdrive unit be it a stasndard or an automatic trans.If you go with a 350 or 400 turbo,or a standard with a 1 to 1 ratio,you will need to go to a higher geared rear,something like a 3:08.Whereas with an OD unit with an output of roughly .75 to 1 ratio you can pretty much use a stock rearend with lower 4:11 gears or so.This combination will give you a lot better MPG,and usually the first gear in an OD trans.is a real kicker for performance getting off of the line.In my 55 2nd series I am running a healthy 350 engine dumping into a 700R4 trans.and 3:90 rearend gears.This combination gets off of the line real quick and delivers 20 MPG all day long.As for problems on the installation that should just involve new motor mounts,and trans. mount which are available from the aftermarket suppliers at a reasonable cost. As for the M2 frontend I put the TCI unit in mine and I love it. Yeah it sits pretty close to the ground and rides and handles just great.I wouldnt have it any other way.
