Yes, if you want to race, go with a v8. Except oval track where the I6's dominate due to low end torque. That aside, v8's are great engines. Inline 6's are great engines too. And for all practical purposes, daily driving with the occasional high school moment, the 240/300 (the 300 is a stroked 240, just as the 390 v8 is a stroked 360) the 300 can make a great performance engine.
Some years ago I set out to keep the hp of my stock 360, yet double the 8mpg (on a good day). I did that with a smallish rv cam, some bowl work, gasket matching the intake to the head, recurving the distributor with an MSD 6a, Offenhauser dual port intake and 4 barrel vacuum secondaries carb, along with long tube Hedman header. When I had my tricked out c6 in it, nothing passed me from a stop to about 100 yards, then the v8's would whizz past. Now that I have changed to manual zf5 trans, I get long, slow shifts, so my days of being quick are over, but my mpg has increased.

One thing I will say is that parts for the 300 cost more than for a v8. That is because everyone and their mother, and the mother's dog has a v8. If I were you, I would head over to Fordsix.com forum and watch the power nation videos linked there. And yes, do pop over to the Inline sub forum for useful info. Good luck.

 

At any cars & coffee or car shows how may straight six do you see?
If you see 1 you might be lucky everyone have a v8 just like everyone has a Chevy why not be different and run a 300 six?

You might want to ask this question down in the motor area for the 240 / 300 motors where you will get more love.

I believe if you run the EFI head it gives you .5 point more compression or is that the 240? You can find that is the motor area.
I would say if you are going to go with a intake & v4 carb then run headers.
As nice as the EFI manifolds are I dont think they can flow like the headers can and if the intake / carb can pull in more air you got to get it out.

On my 81 F100 I run the EFI manifolds, factory replacement Y pipe and pipes all the way to the tail pipe less cat. I also run a Thrush welded muffler.
The pipes are for a 94 F150 as they are larger than the 81 pipes and it fit the Y pipe with out adapters.
I am also running the factory log intake and Carter v1 carb as I wanted the MPG it might bring.
The motor looks factory stock and that is also what I was going for.

I dont know how much this gave in power over stock as I never drove the truck factory stock before a 4 year cab off frame rebuild.
I also run a NP435 fro the granny first as the truck was built as a back up to pull my open deck car trailer.
Yes if I wanted a race truck I would not be running the 300 six and the S L O W shifting NP435 transmission.
The truck is a nice cruiser where ever I want to go and people like the 300 six as it is something different.

BTW Sniper makes a EFI throttle body that fits the v1 factory log manifold or they make a v2 TB and use and adapter to the v4 intake or go with the V4 TB.
This is also talked about in the motor area.
Yep I love my 300 six
Dave ----

 

^^^^^ This! Exactly!!!! ^^^^^

Hot rodding is about doing something cool. It's also about taking what you have and getting the most out of it. You don't see many hopped-up inline sixes at car shows (or anywhere else, for that matter). The Ford 300 I-6 is a superb engine in its own right. It makes decent torque in stock form and will last pretty much forever. If you hop up a 300, and I mean get serious about it, you'll have a peppy, torquey, dependable engine that will be different, in a good way! I've often thought about building an early Mustang, Maverick, or Falcon (in other words, a relatively lightweight body) around a hopped-up 250 I-6 using an Australian head, three two's on a custom-made intake with equal length runners, lots of machine work, and every legit speed part I can lay my hands on. It would make lots of torque (which is what gets you off the line!) and it would attract a crowd at every car show. Would it be as fast as an equally hopped-up 289 or 302? Of course not. But it would attract a LOT more attention than the V-8's would! Am I nuts? Maybe.

 

Yep, which is exactly why I kept the FE architecture in our ‘73. Every single car show I go to is LS this and Coyote that, SBC, yadda yadda yadda. It’s more interesting to see a classic that has the original (or semi-original) powertrain. Our ‘76 has the “six in a row ready to tow” and I’m going to leave it like that permanently, three on the tree and all. Unless you’re going to spend big bucks on a slick shifting modern manual transmission all of that extra power isn’t going to help you terribly much when it comes to keeping up with the newer vehicles anyway.

 

I like the idea of working with what you have. Yeah you could squeeze might ultimately get a little more bang for your buck out of a different option but how many high performance I6 300’s do you see out there? I don't own this truck cause I want to fall inline with a cliche. And I don’t do it cause it’s a good investment cause it’s not. I could pick up anything made in the 90’s or 2000’s and it’d be cheaper and more reliable. You will never get the money you put in back out of it; but you will get the experience of owning it and doing something cool and different.

There is quite a bit of info in building a 300 available. Have fun!

 

I've been a fan of the 300 since way back in like '85 when the 360/390 in my first 66 F100 was worn out, had a farmer with a 69 or 70 F100 that had a 300 in it he had parked for one reason or another, bought the engine for $200 and proceeded to put it in my 66. That poor engine... it ran through my last yr of HS, 6 yrs in the Marines and another couple yrs after that. Was buying a house in OC at the time, and the poor ol girl was just plain beat up, ugly, rusted and tired. Sold the truck to a JY for $400, guy said didn't matter if it ran or not, so I decided the night before he was to pick it up I was going to see just how long it would run... so I started it up, put a bucket down and drained the radiator, put drain pan underneath, drained the oil, and commenced to wailing on it... it ran for at least 25 mins, no oil, no coolant, then wife, now ex, came out as we were supposed to go someplace with friends for dinner. I put all the fluids back in and closed the hood, guy comes next day, sees the 300, asks if it runs... I said sure, for an extra $100 I'll start it up and show you. Dang thing started and purred, he said he needed one for his yard truck and this would do just fine... $500 later and he towed it away.

Since then I have built/rebuilt, re-sealed quite a few of them, best combo I have found is Heddman headers, Offy intake, Holley 390, all of those have returned at least 16+ mpg, with my 79 F250 4x4 averaging 18+ mpg when I sold it to my BIL and drove it to MO.

Currently I'm putting a gasket set on one to put in my 63 F250 4x, debating on stepping into the EFI/Sniper set-up or staying carb... I have a 351C that I was thinking about putting in it, but I just like the 300's more, I may end up selling that to fund the 300 intake/carb and exhaust.

I too prefer to not see an LS/SBC yadda yadda swap in everything, I like OG or close to it, keeps it unique. Had a friend ask me a while back why I haven't done a crown vic swap or anything like that on some of my fleet, and I just told him I prefer to keep it how they made it, it's still on the road so that says a lot.

 

I'm not going to comment much on the V8 vs keeping the inline swap since that should be up to what you want to do.

As for performance on the 6, couple others have mentioned but I highly recommend looking at the Fordsix forum. The 300 community is super active and there's a massive amount of information there (you can find me there under the same handle too!). People have gotten pretty decent results with "mild" builds bumping compression, switching to a 4bbl intake with either carb or sniper EFI (or similar), higher compression, and good cam. The main power killer in the stock 300s is the cylinder head. You can get good improvements with porting and a big valve conversion. Promaxx also makes a CNC ported big valve head now, which is the only performance aftermarket head.

If you want to go off the deep end like I have, you can get into turbocharging. The 300 can take a lot of abuse under boost, with the weakest stock point usually being pistons and then connecting rods. While the Powernation 300 build is good entertainment, I would not recommend following their recipe unless you're building a drag motor - theirs doesn't make peak power until way late, with a lot of turbo lag. The key with a 300 turbo motor is to manage expectations - you're likely not going to have a 500 hp screamer for cheap. For a frame of reference, my goal is 350hp and I am at over $14k in the motor and supporting cast. Internals are
-Fully machined and decked block
-Callies Performance BBC forged H Beam connecting rods
-Stock crank ground down for Callies rods
-Custom forged Racetec pistons
-Custom turbo ground Crower cam and crower lifters
-Promaxx CNC ported big valve cylinder head
-Scorpion roller rockers
-Custom Manton pushrods
-HD 300 exhaust manifold (though I am now looking at going with one of the stainless steel turbo manifolds from Stainless Headers)
-Borg Warner S257-SXE with 0.68 T4 housing

Where mine gets more expensive and complex is with fuel and spark. I'm going with full sequential port fuel injection using a late model lower intake manifold and my own custom designed upper intake, and a distributorless coil near plug ignition using a Megasquirt MS3X for control. People have certainly done blow through setups with carbs or snipers, and those are a much cheaper way to go than what I'm doing.

The good news is that there is a lot more aftermarket support for these motors than when I started my project 4 years ago (mean really gotta finish this up lol) - You can now get forged H beam rods in stock 300 size, so you don't need to make modifications to the crank like I did to run the BBC rods. There's more intake and exhaust options than ever, and more and more people are building these for power. Just know that it is certainly not the cheapest way to make big power. Not having to do the supporting mods for a boosted motor means you could probably get out of it for $5-7k, depending on machine cost and EFI vs carb.

 

Funny last weekend I was at a show and there was 4 straight six motors counting mine.
Old Dodge pick up 2500 with a flat head
65 Mustang fast back with a 200 built up, sounded real nice with a header.
My 81 F100 with 300
and the coolest
A 6? Pontiac Tempest 4 door with a over head cam six and a v1 carb. I have only seen them with a v4 carb on fire birds.

There were also 4 gens of Ford pickup's a first at any show I have been to.
Monkey face hot rod, a bump, a dent pro street and mine.
Dave ----

 

August of 2020, I made a 300-mile round trip to purchase some rare ****** parts that adapt the Borg Warner T-18 transmission directly to a L134 (flathead 134 cu inch engine.inline-4.
My '77 F350 CrewCab got a skosh over 13-mpg round trip. So, the Holley 4-bbl equipped 300 averages 13.
My '77 AMC Jeep cj-7 with the factory 304 V-8 has never beaten 13-mpg either.
Both have 4-speed pickup trans, 32" rubber, no OD and both have 4:10 axle gearing.

I been giving my Crew underside a "makeover" of sorts, you know, media blasting to remove surface rust that has never concerned me since completing the "Build" in 1998. The pickup has been parked indoors out of sun and weather.
I guess I gave my 300 a good durable paint job in 1998, because it still looks nice. Krylon royal blue probably. hahaha

Can't recall who made the intake / exhaust gasket that I used on engine assembly, but it is white, and the Clifford intake / exhaust have never given me issues since (that i am aware of). Maybe made by "Thrush" back when.
I went out yesterday evening, and thought I would start the engine. I hit the throttle pedal twice for a primer squirt of fuel, and the dang thing jumped to life like a rodeo bull coming out of the chute. LoL _ _ _ gotta Love the 300.
That dang 300 is always willing and ready to ramble or work. Just amazes me.

 

By the way guys, I have a spare 300-six that I purchased way back in 2002 which I have never needed.

The reason I purchased the spare was because I drove my 300 in the mountains at higher rpms w 4-bbl kicked in towing, and when running extended upper rpm's things can go awry by chance. hahaha
My 300 is professionally balanced for that reason. That way I can run it like a flat-track bike, on pipe.

The spare 300 is a HD from a '71 F350 flatbed dually dump. The old guy pulled it because a lobe went flat on the cam.
He had been hauling processed firewood to church members, so he did a power upgrade to a 390 FE.

Yes, the spare 300 has an aluminum 4-bbl intake manifold with stock exh manifold.

Should I list it here on Marketplace ? _ _ _ or would I be better to put it on Craigslist ? _ _ _ I'm not a FB user.

This 300 thread just made me think of the "spare" sitting patiently waiting to be used and with new cam.

I have a '57 ****** utility wagon which was powered by a L6-226 flathead engine similar to a Continental Six.
The 300 would be a robust improvement, but I've already purchased a '70 Olds 455 Rocket marine engine for the wagon.
Good cow trail grunt can be obtained with cubic inches and stroke for a 5k lb 4x4.
I also have a nice fresh TH400 for the wagon, with the correct BOP bell pattern. No transfer case adapter yet.

Therefore, no 300 inline six for the ****** utility wagon.