I had a 72 2wd half ton on the tail end of college. 250/3 on the tree. Manual steering, manual brakes, factory no stereo truck "dark yellow" (school buses are about the same color). It had been rebuilt just before I bought the truck, but the first 3 cyls had no compression. We pulled the head and when I caught the pistons as my dad tapped them up outta the block the rings all fell apart in my hand. We mic'ed them, and they were waaay thin. The back 3 checked out fine, so somewhere somebody else must have gotten the other half of this rebuild. New rings back in, put it all back together, and it ran great-well as great as a 250/3 can. It averaged 13mpg no matter how it was driven or loaded. I hated the lack of PS/PB, and the linkage was shot making shifting an art form. I built the 305 out of my mom's old 78 Impala using stock pistons/rods/crank/block just all cleaned up, tossed on an Edelbrock intake and Carter 625 carb, mated the engine to a th350, and using all the crossmember type stuff from a parts truck, everything went right in. Installed some headers, soon figured out the factory 4.11 rearend was too low geared for the slushomatic, swapped out for a 3.07 rearend from the parts truck, and then it ran great again. Still only got 13mpg but it sounded great, had the power options I wanted, and was way more powerful. Made me wish I had gone with a bigger small block, but the 305 is what I had. ...why oh why did I listen to the girlfriend at the time.
Despite the coil rear, I really miss this old truck:
Erik