Yep 250 bucks. It belonged to a friend of mine. It even has brand new tires on it. The tires actually used to be mine, I traded them to my friend to put on the F-250 several years ago, but his financial situation kind of fell through and the truck became a lawn ornament. When I went back to visit him he told me he was going to get rid of it. He was thinking about just getting the $200 for it a junker would give him. My heart seriously stopped! LOL

I told him I would give him $400 for it (knowing it was a bargain at that) if he would keep it in his yard until I could get it to Iowa. He told me he would take $250 if I would get it out of his yard now. I told him I would get it out of his yard now and give him $300 (trying to ease my guilty conscience a little bit). He said no, just $250 and make it gone. (strangest haggling conversation you ever heard LOL)

And yeah, I could build up that 400 v8 and it would sure sound all mean and fantastic, but it's still 400 cubes. I want torque to pull a little camping trailer but I still want good mileage too and a 300 incher six is the ticket. As everybody with half a brain already knows .

Right now I have a 1985 F-250 4x4 with a 300, C6, BW1345, ford sterling rearend with posi, Dana 44 TTB front and aluminum flatbed. I took the feedback carb, intake, exhaust log, and old dizzy out, and put in a used DUI dizzy, clifford intake, efi manifolds, the Y pipe off the 1991 Bronco, two tractor mufflers from the local farm supply, an Impco 425 propane mixer, Model E converter, and two big manchester propane tanks on the flatbed. This 300 runs good with the propane system on it but it is a tired 300 and needs rebuilt.

Lying around I have some nice 300 parts I got off of eBay. Headers, TRW .030 forged pistons, performance head (ported, oversize valves, double valve springs, harland sharp roller rockers) steel timing gears, new oil pump, ARP head studs, Clifford valve cover, and Crane 503901 camshaft. I am going to use all of these except the pistons (I will use cropped 352 pistons to get the compression about 10.5) in a rebuild of the 300 in this 85 over the coming winter (my chore right now is to buy a house). While I have the 300 out for the rebuild I will have the crank drilled for a pilot bearing so I can swap this engine into the 1979 at a later date and use the 4speed manual. The rebuild 300 will use the propane system.

I wish I did but I don't have pics of the 1979. It's kind of a weird two-tone. All blue except the roof of the cab which is white.

And no, you can't buy it

 

Hi Bill, I've been reading through your thread and it sounds to me like you either have an oil pressure problem (probably not) or a lifter/valve gear problem, that clacking you are hearing could be a callapsed lifter causing huge valve clearance,then when you either stop and later start back up or you let it run at low rpm for a while,the bad lifter pumps back up and sounds good again until you hit that magic rpm where the lifter won't hold hydraulic pressure,then she takes a dump again.Not being able to get proper rpm is notorious with lifter or valve spring problems,the latter mostly with high winding type engines.Back in the day, I used to run Pontiac GTO's (until they put chebby engines in them)and they were great torquers,but their rpm limit was 5200,you wound past that,and the lifters would "float out",= race over ,engine ran like crap for 3 or 4 minutes,then you could race again,but peak hp was about 5,000 rpm,so going past was bad anyway.Then some great guy invented "racing hydraulic lifters".Those big block Pontiacs were a lot like the Ford 300 six and their "tri power" 3-2bbl carbs set up was fantastic,you could cruise at 65 on the center carb or kick her to the floor,lite the tires and swear you seen the center of the hood drop,1500 cfm howled like a banschi .Well enough reminising,keep that rpm low untill you get things right to work on her,when it's clacking it's doing harm,so don't make it clack.BTW I have a '96 XL 300 six with a 5 speed stick and 2.73 gears,235/75/15 tires and I love it, cruises 75 on the freeway and it's still sleeping.

 

That sounds about right for a 300/auto with 3.08 gears truck.

Well, there are two reasons to change gears. One, it will compensate for larger tires. Two, if you keep the tires the same, lower gears will give you more power. The only negative side effect of "overgearing" is a loss of top-end speed. Your truck should feel a lot more powerful.

It's got 31" tires on it right now. It's a four speed manual.

That's cool. I just think that lower gears shouldn't ever make a truck feel slower. Something else has got to be wrong if that's the case. With 31" tires and 4.10 gears your truck should be a powerhouse.

 

By the way Bill, I voted for your ride,looks great and I don't care for 4 doors on anything and as far as I'm concerned,they quit building F150's after 1996,so I won't vote for any that are newer.

 

We require pictures and videos of the process of your project truck.

Hello 300Buster, I'm glad to see you around here!

Thanks for your imput. I'm glad you replied. I doubt I flooded the valves but it wouldn't surprise me. I gave my truck "da juice" twice today. She wrapped up to 3,500 RPM and sounded good doing it. The power wasn't impressive but it didn't feel like I was pushing air either. She got up to 30mph just fine. I believe my power loss complaints are a mixture of things. I'm guessing it's part valve train, age, transmission, possibly a sensor or two.

Either way I'm going to ignore it for now; the truck is starting and running fine. It's just no powerhouse like everyone says it should be.


Why did our power stroke diesel feel like such a dog, then? I always thought it was just "over geared" for towing.


Thanks a lot sir I appreciate that!!!

 

How the heck do you guys get such poor milage out of your 300s?
I get 17mpg in the summer and 13 mpg in the siberian winter that ND coughs up.
Summer towing is around 13 mpg.
I got a 435 and 3.55s in the tail. I am sure with an OD swap I would pull 19 summer and 15 winter.

My 96 turned 21 mpg with a M5OD, 3.55 at 55mph. 19 @ 70.

 

I normally get 16.5 @ 60 but I got 18.0 @ 70 on the 1,300 mile trip up here. A good bit of that was in the mountans. I'm not sure I trust my own figures, but I ran the numbers through a handful of times.

Like I said I normally get 16.5 though.

 

I am lucky to get 14 MPG with my '89 F-150 (300, 3.55, T18) no matter how I drive it. It's tuned up, all new filters, no codes, well taken care of.

Gave up trying about three years ago and now I don't drive it much.

 

I wonder why? Do you think it's possible Ford programmer the computer wrong, and thus causing your truck to use more fuel?

 

That makes at least as much sense as anything I ever came up with.

 

LOL.. hey, I felt stupid writing that out, but think about it; if Ford programmed it into the computer and set everything up, wouldn't the truck run just as well and not show any codes or anything????

I feel stupid now but hey, it was just a passing thought!

 

Bill, I don't see that you've checked your fuel filter (I could have missed it). Your discription sounds the most like something is intermitently causing a fuel blockage and the filter is the easist point to check. Other possible causes are debris in the tank being sucked into the pickup that's too large to pass down to the filter and problems related to power delivery to the fuel pump.

 

Hey Chief, thank you for the reply

The fuel filter is still soemwhat new. I'm sure it couldn't hurt to change it, though. It's cheap enough; the last time I had the filter changed I had it done by the local Penzoil place.

I'm not going to bug you guys with this any more until I get some real facts or new data. For now though I'm happy with the truck running and not sucking down fuel like it's free.

I take the truck out every day for 12 to 20 minutes in town driving to check the mail and get lunch for the family. I go a steady 30 mph on the rolling hills. It seems to be doing just fine now. The last oddity was when I tried to tackle a hill when the motor was still cold; it tached out at three thousand and stopped, and then continued to rev up but started clacking, BUT I think this may have been caused by the elivation of the LOOONG I6 motor and the oil still being cold. I think my valves may have been talking to me because they weren't being oiled correctly.

Truck is running like a champ now so I'm going to just keep an eye on everything until I can actually dig a little deeper into it if needed. Don't forget, I'm stuck in a hotel right now.

Thanks again!

 

I just said something to the Chief here that made me think. I think maybe that clacking / tapping noise and not willing to rev really is an oil issue. I don't think anything is seriously wrong though; That day I revved my truck up my truck was sitting on a slight incline, the motor pointing up. The motor was slightly warm, but not hot like it should have been. I'm betting with the oil and motor still cool, and the long profile of the I6, oil simply wasn't getting to all the right parts to oil everything as needed. This would explain why my engine tapped out at three grand going up a minor hill when the motor was still cold.

Like I said, my power seems to be back but I don't want to say anything. I'm only driving around town right now. Now, as far as the power loss on the trip up here, I was thinking maybe it's just my low gearing. If my truck really was lacking power, I wouldn't have been able to hold on to 70 mph on the mountans. I think I was just expecting too much out of my motor. I don't hardly ever drive on the highway anymore after the gear change so maybe the power loss really was in my head. Going from 3.08 to 4.11 is a big difference for highway use.

 

Hey Bill, here is the videos you asked me to make. Nothing too exciting but I hope you like them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oIJr...eature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLyH...eature=channel