Now impressed with my 240 / Upgrades?

[stink bear]

I have had a 72 F100 short bed 4x4 for a number of years, and was never happy with it until this summer. I thought it was pretty weak, and got poor gas mileage. I really wanted to do an engine swap, but I wasn't sure what I wanted.
In the spring I rebuilt the carb with a kit from Mike's, it ran significantly better. I'm pretty I had been in the carb before, I think I rebuilt it, but maybe I just replaced the accelerator pump. I don't know why it made such a difference this time.
I live on a ridge about 500 feet above town, up until this summer I've had trouble pulling the hill. I would lose speed, and get a lot of valve train noise.
Last night I was driving home from a long trip, and I had trouble with the truck. Cruising on the highway at about 65 mph, when I tried to accelerate it would make a lot of valve train noise and the tach would rise significantly. It would go from 3000 to about 6000. I finally stopped and looked in the distributor. I found a broken terminal at the points, the wire that goes to the negative side of the coil. I had enough of the terminal left that I could reattach it, so I did that and started driving again. I got about 1/2 a mile and the truck died. I popped the distributor cap again, the wire that I reattached was stretched kind of tight, I pulled more wire into the distributor, and made sure it had some slack in it to move with the advance. I started it up and it ran great the rest of the way home, about 50 miles. Now it climbs hills well, and no valve train noise. I'm thinking about playing with the timing, I suspect it could be bumped up now.
Basically, after rebuilding the carb, and getting the ignition straightened out, I am now impressed with the 240. It's no torque monster for sure, but it now has plenty of power for me. I believe the truck has 4.11 gears, and I'm running 31" tires. It turns at 3000 rpm at 65 mph. I have an MSD and a Super Coil on it, and I got about 17 mpg yesterday on the highway.
Now I'm thinking about low cost upgrades. I don't want to put a lot of money into it, or make a lot of power. The distributor is probably original, it has some rust on the guts, and I've been thinking about replacing it. I probably will now. I may go to just a Duraspark, or a Duraspark with the MSD. ANy thoughts?
I'm also wondering about a split exhaust manifold from a later model 300. Does anyone know if a 240 would benefit from that?
Any other good, low cost upgrades I should consider?
Thanks.

[Slong1958]

Stink Bear if you don’t find what you’re looking for here go to this site https://fordsix.com/ there’s a lot of performance information on there. I’m in the process of upgrading my 69 240 now. I put a 300 rotating assembly in it, so now i have a 300. I had the 240 head reworked and using efi split Exhaust manifolds. I’m keeping the stock intake manifold and carb for now but may upgrade down the road. The guys on that site said I would see a big power gain just with what I’m doing.

[stink bear]

Slong - Thanks for the reply, I'll probably put a similar post on the fordsix site.
I may put a 300 in my truck at some point, but I'm not sure now that the 240 is running better. It's just a summer toy. If I could get a little better performance out of it with cheap, bolt on mods, like a split exhaust and better spark, I would probably stick with the 240. I'm a big fan of the low end torque of the 300, but I'm not sure I need that, and I'm not sure how much a stock 300 would help climbing a hill at 55 mph, when turning close to 3000 rpm's. It may be running out of power at that point.
IIRC, I checked compression on my engine when I got the truck, and they were all good. The engine has around 100k miles on it, so the internals are probably still in pretty good shape.
I'm not sure how much the MSD is helping, it's my understanding that as the rpm's increase, the number of sparks decrease, and it stops delivering multiple sparks at about 3000 rpm. With my gears, I'm often running at higher rpm.
What is the head work you're having done? Just a basic valve job, or porting, bigger valves, etc?