PART two of Scotty’s big five-week thrash to get his dad’s VE Valiant ute ready for a mega road trip to Mopar Sunday continues in this episode, with a focus on tearing the 318ci Mopar small-block.

Scotty has owned the 318 for a long time, but it’s always been a dry short-block that he’s never had running in a car. Even though most people look down on the 318 as the boring engine in the Mopar small-block family, Scotty rates these things and is hoping to get around 400hp and 12-second timeslips from the little donk.

His first mission was to pull apart the bottom end, taking out the camshaft, rods, pistons and crank to make sure everything was in good order.

And, of course, that’s when things went a bit astray. It didn’t take Scotty long to figure out that the 318 had mismatched rods, with two rods looking very different to the other six. It’s not necessarily the end of the world if they’re matched correctly, but we’ll have to wait for the boys at Top Torque to balance the bottom end before we know if we’re in strife or not.

The Top Torque crew will also be shaving down the block, heads and intake manifold in the pursuit of more compression. Chrysler 318s have always been a bit low on blow, so Scotty is hoping that decking the block around 71thou and taking some off the new Edelbrock heads and intake manifold will yield a comp ratio around the high nines to low 10s.

Scotty also gets a big parts haul from Summit Racing: ARP bolts and studs; a windage tray; dipstick; oil pump and sump; new rockers; and a bunch of little items that should save us some time with a build schedule this tight.

We’ve also got a fresh pair of Pacemaker Headers pipes that should make this conversion much easier; last time we Mopar-swapped a car (440ci in Mr Dodgey) we had to custom-make headers, and it sucked big time.

We’ll keep the episodes pumping on the VE Valiant ute build as Scotty gets closer to D-day, so make sure you keep an eye on our socials and YouTube channel for future episodes and updates.