Ford 300 powered hot rod? Ever seen one?
 

The November 2004 issuse of American Rodder magazine has an article titled "Rod Power: 50 Good Engine Choices for Your Street Rod." It includes pretty much what you'd expect; mainly various small block and big block American V8s. There's Chevys, Fords, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Cadilacs and Mopars, from flatheads, nailheads and early Hemis to LS6's, Northstars and Modular V8s. There's also a few Viper V-10's and a pair of Jaguar engines, one of which is a V-12 and the other represents the only inline six I saw listed in the entire article.

But there wasn't a single inline six from any American source. No 300's. No 250's. No Slant Sixes. No sixes from AMC or Chevy. Not even one.

Now I post this not so much to complain about that as I do to make note of the obvious reason why this is so. People just so rarely built rods around inline six powerplants that they didn't have much reason to show any pictures of them.

Now having said that, I want to openly state here that I am a bit of a closet inline six fan, and Ford's venerable old 300 cubic inch light truck engine is one for which I have a particular affection. This is because the very first "truck" I ever drove was my father's 69 Ford Chateau Club Wagon van, which he ordered with heavy duty everything and power nothing. It had the upscale interior, but no radio. It had a three speed manual transmission with a column shifter and a heavy duty clutch that you needed a strong leg to disengage. And powering it was a 300 cubic inch inline 6.

As it happens I'm also a closet hot rod enthusiast. I buy scads of various magazines and linger over photos of and articles about early Ford highboy roadsters and various coupes and other rods. I've been noticing that virtually all of them (with a few notable exceptions) have v8 engines of one sort or anther, and thinking, however, that it might be an interesting variation to build something with a Ford 300 under the hood.

Now I've been lurking here for a while ... Quite a while ... More than a year, actually. I've pretty much figured out that such a project would be feasble and not unreasonable in that a properly built 300 would provide adequate power and torque for such a vehicle, but that it would probably require a few special things like a frame that was a bit longer than normal between the radiator and the firewall, and a custom built set of headers because the only ones I've seen for that engine are designed to fit between the fenders of relatively late model trucks rather than in the context of a street rod. Has anybody here ever built such a rod or know of one for which there are photos out on the web?

:)

[I also posted this over on the Ford Six Performance forums, by the way. I hope nobody minds the crosspost.]

Try www.inliners.org and go to the rides section. There is pictures of many makes of street rods all powered by inline engines.

yup and i seen on cardomain.com a 67? f-100 with a blown 300...

As the periodically proud/annoyed owner of a fine 300 six, I just question the sanity of this question.

People post all kinds of stuff here and I find most of it entertaining, much of it interesting and some useful. I see people claiming their (tuna boat stationwagon motor) power to be invincable, their (obsolete overweight oil-leaking) engine to be the best engine ever made. And then there are those who refer to the 300 as a "torque monster" and others who talk about running it to 5000 rpm regularly. Just short of "and then there's the time I dusted John Force..."

It's a low performance, 1 bbl, slow turning chipper and pickup motor.

You can throw lots of money at it, but until you take two V-8 heads and weld them together and/or put a hairdryer on the side it's slower than whale poop headed for the bottom..

Will it pull all day? Yes. Does it last a long time? Yes. Is it a great motor for a light duty truck, log chipper or concrete pump? Yes.

So, go dig up those 1967 Hot Rod mags where Ak Miller stuffed one into a Mustang and went 160+ at Bonneville. Spend all you want on it, it will help the economy.

But if you want to go FAST after all that work, start with some that's already fast and make it go faster......

Please feel free to call me names, question my heredity, and sanity. Now, I've got to figure out a way to put a T5 behind mine to make it faster....

All i've got to say is that when you're gunna hot rod a motor, cubes are cubes.

The article was "50 Good Engine Choices...."

I doubt you'd see the 300 until they got to "250 Good Engine Choices....."

Who cares? I would love to see someone get some major ponies out of a 300. There is a certain satisfaction from building something out of the ordinary. There are websites that sell performance parts for inline six's. And I bet that a well built 300 could hold it own against a 5.0 easy, thats what would be so cool about it. Just my opinion.


-Matt

Built to the Hilt
 

Does no one read "Custom Classic Trucks" magazine? :-X01
It would seem not from what I have been reading here. :rolleyes:
Right, now go to www.customclassictrucks.com & Order the August 2001 issue. :-tap
In that issue on Pg. 70 you will find an Article intitled "THE JOY OF SIX"; Getting More Power From Your Inliner, by Jim Richardson. :-X22

Enjoy reading a rather informative article my fellow FTEr's & 300 I-6 lovers. :cool:

Cheers :-wink
Colonel Flashman
Red '58 Mercury M-100 :cool:
Blue '58 Mercury M-100 Panel :cool:

P.S.
My Red M-100 will soon have a Built to the Hilt 300 I-6 & C-4 installed, so I know where fore I speak. Oo. :-X22 :-wink

Oh, boy ... Seems I got a few responses. I'll address them one by one and with what I hope will be seen as a friendly demeanor.

:)

300inline6:
Thanks. I'd forgotten about their web site, though I do recall stumbling on it at one time a while ago. I've bookmarked it for future reference.

:)

optikal illushun:
Cool approach to 300 Ford six inline power, though in terms of the possible project being contemplated I'm thinking more along the lines of an old-style hot rod, and a 67 anything would, in that context, be a late model vehicle. Heck, I think maybe you could get a 300 in one of those from the factory. Still, it might have some useful info about getting a few more ponies out of the engine, so thanks.

:)

85e150six4mtod:
That's okay. I question the sanity of the question, too, and I'm the one who asked it.

:)

Yeah ... seems like a lot of interesting folks come here to talk about a variety of things related to the Ford 240/300 six. It's why I came here to ask about this.

:)

Well, yeah, when it's stock, but that's a part of the reason the idea makes me smile. "Hey Dude, what's that under your hood?" "Oh, that? It's an engine I salvaged from an old wood chipper somebody had junked." "Say WHAT?!"

:-X24

Well, I don't know about that. I gather that with the right modifications (intake, exhaust, some head work, higher compression pistions, and a cam) it's not so hard to get, say, 250+ HP and a whole bunch of torque out of them. While that might not turn a full sized pickup truck weighing in excess of 2 tons into a sports car, it ought to be plenty to give a 2500 pound, glass bodied 32 Ford highboy roadster (or something similar) an adequate amount of what I'll call "wahoo factor." (In this context, "wahoo factor" is that which makes you yell "WAHOO!" when you push on the big pedal on the right.)

:)

Well, yeah, I'm not foolish enough to think it's the most powerful motor on the planet or anything, and yeah, there's plenty of engines that would be more rational choices, but, well, everybody uses those and as a consequence of that they're boring . "Oh, gee ... another hot rod with a small block Vee-Eight ... <yawn>"

:)

Keep this in mind, though -- the latest rage in these rods seems to be "nostalgia rods" which tend to use old, salvaged flathead Ford V8s that have been tuned up a bit with mods similar to what I'm contemplating for the 6, and they start with fewer cubes, far worse breathing, and a design that dates back to the early 30's. In that context the 300 six isn't such a ridiculous alternative at all.

:)

No need. You're talking sense. You're just not wrapping your head around the reasons I would choose a 300 six over, say, a 351W or a small block Chevy. It's partly a tribute to that old Ford van my father had back in the 70's when I was learning to drive, and it's partly just a whimsical bit of playfulness to make people ask, "What the heck is that ?"

:)

<chuckle> That sounds like a worthwhile mod to me. Good luck with it.

:)

rhetor:
Well, yes and no, but mostly yes within the limits of reasonably modern engine design.

:)

85e150six4mtod:
That's fair enough, but, geeze ... are American built inline 6s so utterly crappy that they don't deserve at least passing mention in such an article? I mean, come on ... they had things like a Corvette LT5 engine. Do you know how RARE those are? Cool, yes, but good luck finding one you can actually use without being lynched by the Corvette guys who want it for the car they're restoring.

:)

MatthewC:
I'd be happy with a bit less than what I'd call "major ponies," but yeah, that would be cool, too.

:)

Yeah ... THAT'S what I'm talking about. You got it.

:)

Well, I'm not so worried about that, myself. I'm 49 years old and I've outgrown the need to try to beat the guy in the next lane to the next stoplight ... well ... mostly.

:-X24

Col Flashman:
I am pretty sure I saw that article online somewhere ... maybe on the Clifford Performance site a year or two ago? Can't recall right now.

Thanks for all the responses, folks. I'll keep checking back to see what folks say here.

:)

Now that there is what I call a well thought out and reasoned response. I'm just PO'd because I can't get 100 free horsepressure by turning the aircleaner lid upside down....

Unreal.........

how but this for a 300 80 f100 300/wcam,header,4vbacked up with a real toploader out of a 69stang,4:10rear pulin a 14.2 in a1/4 not the fastest thing around but it had to be the funest truck i haver had and still own for 17 years.there was a guy at our local track that had 1 in a dragster it run low 9's

Why don't you come out of the closet and build one? I'm building one up right now to go in a '64 f100, but it would be way cool in a long-hooded street rod. I have a flathead that I've been hanging on to for years for just such a project, but the 300 would tear it up. I'm just wierd enough to consider it... I also read somewhere about a 300 in a Model A. Bet he beefed up the front end!

I've been thinking about it for a while now. Perhaps when my finances get a bit less shakey I will do just that.

:)

Cool!

:)

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one afflicted with this particular form of insanity.

:-X24

Street Rodder ran an article back in October 2004 with a 300 Ford in a 1933 Chevy Sedan with a M5OD transmission. It's on page 110.