Driving the truck for a few hundred miles revealed a few things that needed attention, mainly the carburetor, ignition, and exhaust. The original 307 is still in the truck, but I believe it may have been rebuilt at some point. My goal is to keep this old motor going as long as it can, so I mainly did a tune up back with stock specs in mind (no over the top power goals here...), which makes this update relatively mundane, but if you would like to hear any further details, I'd be happy to answer any questions!
The only "upgrade" I did was to swap to an HEI distributor from Scott White Performance. I've read mixed reviews on these distributors, but at that price it was worth a shot. So far, it has performed very well. Along with the distributor, I replaced plug wires (of course) and plugs and discovered that 4 of the old wires were burnt and ALL plugs were fouled out badly. I rebuilt the carb with a Mike's Carb Parts kit, put new exhaust manifolds on (the originals were cracked), along with a few other small things. Along the way, this board proved an invaluable resource, so thank you everyone! Here are just a few pics.
The carburetor was very dirty beforehand (shown here) but works well now with the rebuild kit.
Of course my son wanted to help!
After setting initial timing and double checking everything, she fired right up. All I had to do was fine tune the timing and she was ready to go. I could immediately notice an improvement in performance with the new distributor and rebuilt carb. It's not going to win any races but it is more than adequate for a little old 307, and it sounds pretty good too!