My son has a 1980 f-150 4x4 with a 300 inline, been sitting along time and was going to rebuild the carb and do some other housework on it. It currently has a carter 1bbl and stock intake, I got a line on a holley 600 with sec vacuum/electric choke and a offenhauser intake for $200 total and was wondering if I swapped out if I would need to do anything else or is it even worth it. Appreciate any responses.

 

Joe Dillon,

Welcome to the forum!

My recommendation is to save the money and "do some other housework on it". Likely, there will be many little things needing attention, since "it has been sitting a long time". These things will have to be addressed with or without changing the carburetion, which then leads to exhaust modifications and questions as to whether or not to change the camshaft, etc.

Fix what you have and have fun. Once you get it running well and dependably, then see if you want/need more power?

I have driven six cylinder engines for years and am content with the one barrel and its fuel economy. And by the way, my son also drives a F150 with six cylinder engine. Enjoy sharing time with your son!

Have a good day!

 

I say go for it. I did on my 84 and love it. I was starting to have countless problems with smog pumps and egr valves. The 30 year old carb was also about shot. Put an offy, 390 holley and some headers on and eliminated everything that was starting to go bad anyways. I get better gas mileage, more power and the truck loves it.
There are countless posts here on everything you will need to know about the conversion. Anything you can't find just ask and responses are usually quick and knowledgeable.
You can get the factory exhaust manifolds from a junk yard and save some money versus headers but $200 for an offy and a 600 holley is in my opinion a good price.
Let her run, trust me, she wants to.

 

"Fix what you have and have fun. Once you get it running well and dependably, then see if you want/need more power?"

Good advice.

 

Appreciate the feedback, always good advice to keep it simple and just get it done. I failed to mention that I also drive a 1986 F-150 with an inline3 and my son previously had a 1984 F-150 w an inline3 (until he rolled it, hopefully lesson learned). We bought this truck at an charity auction on the fly and are looking forward to a bit of a build together. Already know we would like a little more power and torque and would like to accomplish that as simply as possible. Just curious if we could install the intake and carb w/o having to do any other major changes.

 

Thanks for the reply, was curious as what all you had to do accomplish the swap and you answered my other question because you seem very happy with the difference. I was looking at keeping existing exhaust and maybe changing out the ignition and so forth.

 

My first reaction was the same as yours. But I'm also interested in learning a lot more than I know now and maybe getting a little more out of the truck at the same time, while also working alongside my son. I have many questions , but if you have any suggestions including the obvious about what I might want to look at considering that "it's been sitting awhile". I would really appreciate the jump forward in my knowledge.