Thread: 186 mods?

186S carby and manifold. Rare but they get around. Possibly also a 350 Holley on a Cain manifold but they are not as good offroad unless modified for anti-slosh in the fuel bowl.

They are quite easy to get a bit of extra power out of. Them same rules apply for all engines - more air and fuel in - and out, so carb, extractors and a decent cam will net quite a few extra HP if done properly. I always found a weber carb worked well with a 2 barrel manifold - there should be some of these around still. The weber doesn't bolt straight onto these manifolds, but adaptors are easily made if an off the shelf one cannot be found.

The cam on these are straight forward - but do put an alloy cam gear on the new cam, and not a fibre one - they won't cut it on a cam with a bigger lift than standard. The oil feed for the cam gear will need drilling out slightly larger to stop the alloy gear howling, and if you do this, you should also fit a high volume oil pump.

The electronic ignition is not a bad idea either - you will get a better spark, and no more points and condensers to bother about.

Although not absolutely nessesary, if you wanted to pull the head off again and have it cleaned up a bit in the ports, that would help too.

All easy enough to do with fairly basic tools and a spare weekend.

Cheers - Gav

Are you still running standard diffs?


Cheers, Mick

Cheers for the replies. Yeah Mick, i'm still running standard diffs. I'll keep an eye out for those parts and try and get it all together.

I would put a Yella Terra head on it, injection, extractors, maybe a mild cam (a large cam will make the vehicle jerky in low range) and electronic injection

As has been said above!

Remember that most late Holden red sixes were cam'ed and carbed for the automatic gear boxes. The vacuum advance port in the Stromberg carby for the auto engine is in the wrong position for a manual, so the throttle body off an earlier (manual gearbox) engine is better, almost all 202's suffer this problem.

Also not mentioned above is the sump. If possible try to get the sump and oil pump pick-up off a HT model engine where the bulge is in a more central position. The sumps with the bulge at the front or at the rear suffer oil starvation on steep decents or steep climbs.

Originally Posted by Ummagumma

I would put a Yella Terra head on it, injection, extractors, maybe a mild cam (a large cam will make the vehicle jerky in low range) and electronic injection

Although these are all good ideas, I'm not sure if they meet this part of the OP equation "So what is the most effective but fairly inexpensive"

go around scrap yards befor they all get shreded and you will find yella terra and worked engines.used to be common in garage sales.

the vacum ports.
emision engines in NSW-VIC have a dist vac signal based on mid rev cruise.some had a manifold vac only in top gear and high water or oil temperature.all to reduce nox in traffic.

most owners swap it to manifold vac but this requires a modification to the distributor.

electronic distributors are very easy to get cheep.but the advance curves are not very good and need some adjustments.
my EFI VK picked up heaps of go when i emergency swaped a bedford van 173 points distributor.