Ok. I have a 81 f100 i am working on. It has a 300 c.i running bare stock. I decided that i wanted to rebuild this truck, as a tribute to dad. (He bought the truck new and put 357,000 miles on it) I would love to put a lot of power in this truck with the 6 in it, but have no clue where to go.


Also what would it take to change from the 3 on the coloum to a t18?

 

I will have pictures this evening

 

A good place to start looking for info is the 300 forum here on ford-trucks. Go to the top level forum list and scroll down until you find the 4.9L/300 forum. There is a lot of good info there. There is also another online forum for the 300, but I will avoid naming it here for reasons that I won't mention now. A google search will should turn it up.

Getting a lot of horsepower out of the 300 takes work. The good news is, the stock block, crank, and rods are excellent pieces. With 7 main bearings, the bottom end can handle a lot of power. The bad news is, the head sucks. The stock head has very poor flow and will not support much in the way of horsepower improvements without work. They can be made respectable with porting and polishing, larger valves, etc. However, they are also thin wall castings and cannot take much in the way of material removal, so porting must be done carefully. The trick is knowing where to take out material and where not to. There is a company that is working on an aluminum head for the 300, but it is still in development. Last I heard from them, they were hoping that it would be available later this year and their target price is around $1300 (just a target, not firm).

I have no experience in this area, but have been told that with proper porting and polishing along with good exhaust and intake systems, you can get 250 HP (some say as much at 300 HP) with a carbed 300. You might consider a turbo. Again, no personal experience here, but there is info in the 300 forum. Plus there are a lot of good folks who hang out there and answer questions.

The swap from "3 on the tree" to a T18 should not be too bad. The trans tunnel cover for the floor-shifted T18 are easy to find in the junk yard. So are the steering columns (without the shifter). I don't know about the drive shaft length. Your drive shaft may work, or you may need different length. The T18 was very common in our years of trucks, so parts should be easy to find. It would be a much easier swap than going from an auto to the T18.

Good luck with the project.
Jim