Is your engine all stock? Maybe what you need is a used 4-barrel carb. Put a rebuild kit in it, get a used Performer RPM, Weiand Steath or some Chinese knock-off aluminum intake, (used of course - eBay) and there you go. Big improvement, nice and cheap, should have no problem terrorizing the student parking lot at your school.
Not too bad, just a little bit at a time, as it becomes affordable... The intake+carb should get you a good bit more power, and for way less than the cost of setting up a rearend. Then you can do electronic ignition for as little as $50-$80 and that will improve things quite a bit especially if your old stuff is worn out, then the cam will set you back maybe $150, a pair of cheap glasspacks, an x-pipe and dumps installed should be under $200 at the right shop. Then the higher stall converter and the gears aren't so cheap, but not insane. By the time you get to that point anyway the car should feel downright brutal compared to how it is now, and without a whole lot of money.
before we get too deep into this car, how are the floors? The metal better be solid. Listen to these guys, they speak the truth. you can get a used intake, polish the cast marks out of the runners, make it flow nice, just look around and ask questions before shelling out the dough. Get a good carb. I battled with the edlejunk 1406, and I have one word about that, DEMON, but they cost $$. Don't settle for inferior stuff because you didn't do a little homework, I kick myself everytime I don't listen to my own advice. and seriously, start getting hot rod type mags and read them, get new ideas, learn how the stuff works, and take an auto shop class if your school offers it Shaun
Justin, If you are bucks-down, one of the best things you can do to wake that car up is recurve the stock distributor. From the factory, Ford has two different weight springs on the advance weights in the distributor... a heavy one and a medium-weight one. Get a second medium one from another car and swap out that heavy one. That will get the ignition curve down into a good range where you can use it. Do not use a set of lightweight advance springs from a speed shop ... it will almost guarantee to make the motor knock. After you get the distributor recurved, work with the ignition timing. It will probably be happy with 10-12 degrees of initial, but try it and if it knocks, back it off a couple of degrees. In 74, the factory setting was pretty lazy for emissions purposes. If your car is exempt from emissions inspections, you might want to simplify all the vacuum tubing leading up to the distributor. Just one simple line from the manifold to the outboard vacuum port on the distributor. If your distributor has a second port closer inboard, leave that disconnected. Don't mess with any other emissions stuff, EGR, gas tank vapor system ... they are there for good reasons. Cost of all this ... very close to zero,... and it will wake the car up a bit.
take a trip to the junkyard and see what you find,some of the cool stuff i've found are a MSD7 box, a custom set of long tube headers for a foxbody,a 750 holley...and the stuff you can't use on your own car, you can sell it and use the money for more speed parts.
i remember those days, i would spend all my money on going out and concerts instead of spending it on my mav....just save you money a little at a time and it'll add up. and take care of your engine don't wind it up to 6,000 like i used to do
