Have been offered a High Dollar 300ci Ford 6cyd Drag Motor

A 0 imbalance sbf flywheel, mustang clutch and a pilot bushing should work

 

I will refer you to the ShadowMaster on those questions.
I have found out that the 65/66 300's............some came with forged cranks.............and turn the journals down to SBC of I think 2.1. Use can also use Chevy pistons I believe.............but maybe the ShadowMaster can lend some light on that subject.

 

not sure about the years.. but there were many heavy duty steel versions of those cranks made. I robbed mine out of an old panel truck in the junkyard. Been too long.. but I think it was an early 70's motor and the tell was some type of casting marks or something like that.

As for the journal size.. yep sbc is the cheapest way to go with huge aftermarket/custom sizing availability. I used longer 240 rods on my low-budget build but the piston skirts were rediculously short for that rod/stroke on a street engine and they needed to be flycut for 0 deck height. Just need to be damned sure to also increase the small journal radi to promote durability when you start spinning that thing over 7k while making power. Turning down the counterweights and cleaning up the horrible casting flash on those cranks never hurts anything either.

About all I can remember right now but I do still have the spec sheet floating around in my file cabinet somewhere if anyone is interested.

PS. I do actually remember hunting junkyards to find a smaller crank pulley and larger alternator/PS pulleys to make a poor mans underdrive setup. I went a little too far though because my lights dimmed just a bit at idle when I had too many accessories on at night. Although, not really even sure what amp alternator it was plus my idle speed was set a touch too low simply because I wanted that extra bit of lope at idle so no one thought it was stock. These days I go out of my way and even spend more cash just to make it sound stock. I think I may have gotten too many tickets over the years and it forced me more towards stealth mode. lol

 

As mentioned...............

That'll do it. With a serious (or even semi-serious) engine I'd go with an 11" clutch/pressure plate setup. On my first street engine I used Pontiac 2.11" intake valves and 1.71" Boss 302 valves with the stems/keeper grooves cut down to the stock locations. Now days it is a simple matter to use a set of Ferrea 6000 series stainless valves made to order. Sounds expensive but it's not. Crane has a decent hydraulic street cam if you don't want to keep up with valvetrain adjustments.

H-224/309-2-6; #500211; .497" Int/.523" Exh; 224/234 @ .050"; 106 lsa

This one is more serious......
H-238/3347-8; #500641; .539"/.539" - 238/238 @.050" - 108 lsa

Then the typical hot rodder stuff. Roller rockers with studs/guideplates and good springs. Clifford Research single four barrel intake manifold and a good 750-ish carb with an electronic distributor. Clifford or Hooker headers for the particular car. With this engine swap you'll probably have to settle on Clifford stuff.

With an aftermarket rod I'd use the SBC journal of course. I also like the 240 length even if it does require a short skirted piston. Had them before and never had a problem. Turning down the outside throws of the crank is not a cost effective deal for a street/strip or bracket style six cylinder. You end up adding a ton of Mallory metal to balance the crank and the cost is outrageous. Invest in a good balancer instead.

 

Thank you all for the incredible information!

Is there a manufacturer w/ a stock part # for the short skirt pistons to run w/ the 240 rods, or are they custom pieces?

Jim P.

 

Well, most of the work will be with the head and induction system. I think I could get away with maybe nitriding indexing polishing and radius and maybe use the stock rods with ARP bolts and some polishing of the beams. Not sure about pistons, but it sounds like you can use Chevy pistons...........just heard this.
I've done a couple of sheet metal intakes before, only V8's though, and the headers should be pretty easy. You can get or make exhaust/intake plates so you can just stub the exhaust............so fare I haven't ventered out looking for a block............but what about using the 240 head which has a closed chamber, not open like the 300............just a thought.

 

Interesting dyno pull on a 300ci Ford 6..................with single 4brl.

 

Custom pistons. However, if you're just doing a street/strip type deal then use the 300 rods with an off-the-shelf piston. Compression distance is 1.600"-ish so they're not hard to find.

Yup, that'll work nicely. My first six engine had that type setup. I did bush the rods though because........

I used a flat top small block Chevy piston as well. The 1.600" compression distance makes it pretty easy. Depending on the deck clearance you're looking for you can also look at Ford 302 pistons since they're in the ballpark as well.

Too many out there to bother with a sheetmetal unit. Lots of dual four barrel, single four barrel, dual webers, and even some older triple Weber 48IDA downdraft manifolds (individual runner).

If you're into fab work then have at it, man!

Shrouds the valves.

 

if I had it to do all over again with current parts.

lightened/polished/peened 240 rods w/ the best arp bolts available. IIRC.. there wasn't much available for these particular engines that many years ago.. but may be better to rob another motors bolt and cut length to fit if that's still the case. But I would assume that ARP should have wave locs for this motor by now. If not then I would have to dig up my spec sheet to be sure.. but off the top.. I think it was a BB Ford or BB Chevy?.. that I cut down length slightly to make use of the wave loc 2000's. Whatever you do.. don't oversize the holes to go up larger since you will lose shoulder strength/mating surface in the process.

Higher rod ratio is needed for sure at higher rpm as that helps counteract so may negatives.. the most important of which is the cylinder heads flow potential. The short sides are damned near horrible on these heads(like many Ford heads with squished short sides.. they howl at higher lifts on the flow bench as the ass comes off the cone. Increased piston dwell time from a longer rod will help make up for that and improve VE through ramming/scavenging in the upper rpm's.

As for the off the shelf or used intakes that don't need to be hunted, imported, or repaired. I personally think that most suffer in one way or another and custom is the only way to go for a more serious NA motor. If it were me?.. I would look into having a Clifford street intake cut along the length(about midway through the carb pad) and then weld in some nice smoothly radiused velocity stack entries followed by a sheetmetal box with a bit of welding in the corners to smooth the interior out a bit and avoid dead/stagnant spots. Even better may be to cut the runners off that Clifford and then mod a box for dual Holley 450's. Throttle response.. AND.. rpm capability all rolled into one. Then again.. with all that work and cost for that Clifford intake(they should be cheap enough used though).. you may as well just build from scratch. lol

Heads. As for the 240's shrouding the valves?.. well.. you'll need to do some major work to these heads to make them really flow well and up to higher lifts anyways.. and unshrouding pinch points will still be necessary whatever way you go here. Personally, I'll take smaller chambers as the better baseline to develop a chamber almost any day. The 240 has a shallower chamber with steeper wall angles as well and that helps make for a better baseline to custom shape it where need be. Then you don't need to nip it as much to get the cc's back from all the needed work. Another trick that works well is to angle mill these heads. IIRC.. I cut mine .080 off the plug side of the head and that alone helped with some of the short sides issues. I've heard of some racers rolling them over with .120 cuts.. but mine was just a warmed over lower budget street build and that's a damned long head to worry about down the road if the thing ever gets too hot so I went conservative for once. I couldn't find a good 240 head to mod at the time of my build.. and that was one of my only regrets with that particular build since I could only muster about 9.5 CR after all was said and done. A 240 head gives you an easy 1/2 point to start with. Well.. that regret.. and off the shelf cam choices at the time. lol

Also on these heads.. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT put 1.6 valves in any of these factory heads because you will absolutely ruin the tiny bit of shortside that already exists since theres simply not enough material left there to grind it back in after that swap. I used 1.6 valves cut down to 1.55 on my build.. but even then the short side was not what I wanted it to be and the port howled a bit as the ass got ripped off at anything over about .550 lift?..might have been close to .600 though.. or so. If I were to do it again.. I would use a "measly 1.5" exhaust with a deeper hardened seat and get a decent shortside out of the deal. Same thing applies to the intakes but to a lessor degree since the short is not quite as bad. Although you don't want to go too large there either since you just pinch flow on the outer edge and go backwards. Port shape is often far more important than valve size and nice clean curtian flow around the perimeter will usually be better overall. A custom shim style head gasket with thinner and tighter bore size will help with quench too. And 5/16 stemmed valves with a nice 5 angle valve job will help in more ways than one too.

Even more on these heads(yeah.. I know.. "that guy just won't shut up!", lol). When porting it's best to LEAVE THE FLOORS ALONE.. and spend the time on the roofs and CSA where the bulk of the flow column is running. Being armed with greater knowledge of "what makes a good port" nowadays.. I would even go so far as to mock up and test flow an intake port with the floor filled about .150-.200 and then blended into the port a ways. If that improved things.. and that's not an uncommon result if it did.. then I would raise the intake ports roof to the absolute max available and slot the intake/design it to sit higher on the head. It's surely a lot of work combined with trial and error.. but all these little port mods can cumulatively add up to give another 20 horses on high rpm motors using factory heads. Plus, you can end up with better burn characteristics, bsfc, timing requirements and so on that can be leveraged for even more gain when tuning. One minor improvement opens the door to 2 others when we spend the time.. or even just get lucky.

Pistons. Custom all the way and with no valve reliefs. Then choose/install the cam based off the heads flow chart and cut your own reliefs if needed(I use the Isky tool). As mentioned earlier though.. the chambers are deep.. and you may need very little notch work unless you go with a .700 lift cam and rediculous timing on this thing(which may become necessary for a full effort motor). Plus you'll end up with shallower/reduced angle reliefs with less cc losses.. than any off the shelf part will have..especially if you decided to angle mill the head anyways. Personally, I'd go with a 6-8 cc dome to get some compression into it and then smooth/notch it were required.. or at the very least let the slugs pop out about .005 if you go with flat tops... and depending on what head gasket thickness you ended up with.

Cam. Better to have a smaller lobe lift and higher ratio rockers to further help with these heads poor short sides. The longer 240 rods increased dwell time will also help compliment that faster open/close setup as well since there's more area under the curve with that arrangement. And of course a custom solid roller is the obvious choice here.

Should also go without saying that this engine obviously needs a full studding treatment as well. Just my dirty penny on the subject.

PS. you'd also be surpised at how many holes will need to be drilled into that crank to make it 0 balance and compensate for using short skirted slugs with lightened rods. I don't think it even cost me 200 bucks more to have mine lathed versus turned into swiss cheese. Very little mallory needed to be used. At the very least.. I would knife edge it and get a good custom fit scraper and kickout style pan made up. That's conservatively worth 10 horses pretty easy on a higher rpm 4 inch stroke engine. Just sayin.. you'll be cutting the hell out of it anyways and it usually pays to cut it right. Drilling crank throws to find balance increases drag/windage and should be best left to stock or milder builds...IMHO. Also consider that maller diameter counterweights also give the added benefit of increased crank durability and bearing life on high rpm motors.. in a perfect world.

EDIT. I found this 240 head with a quick search. And as usual.. some just can't help but to lower the floor.. but otherwise it looks decent. I'd even go so far as to get a hold of them to see if they still have that digitized file and to see what ended up being of it. Or maybe you can even get a hold of the customer who originally had it done to see what ever became of it? Sure doesn't look like a street/strip build to me.
http://c-techperformance.com/2012/03/10/3089/

EDIT.. EDIT. well looky here guys! This is what I'd be looking at using. Thicker decks allow more lattitude with angle milling too!
http://www.enginebuildermag.com/Art...logy_for_greater_strength_and_durability.aspx

damnit!.. now I want to build one of these again too.

 

I am going to look at a running motor towards the end of this week, so we will see, but it would be nice to have a motor as a mock-up and also see if I can hook my Glide up to it witout making too many mods.

I've seen the dual quad intakes, but would rather make my own with removable top plate so I could try different carbs, tripower, 2 twos, and whatever.
I don't think the headers need to be any bigger than 1-3/4" but there is plenty of room on that side of the motor.

So, we will see. The guy with the Altered wants to finish this season anyway..........................so it will be the end of this year before I'd have
the motor anyway.

 

I've got some friends in Australia and may give them a call and see what they say, but Australia does make some really nice products for the Ford V8's....................I would assume they may do so for the Ford six also.

I've been talking with Gromm Cylinder Head and he has built a couple of the 300ci Ford motors for the "Roundy Round" crowd and suggested maybe going with the 240 head, using 1.94 intakes and 1.6 exhaust and using Chevy 230/250 six rockers which are 1.76........and open up the combustion chamber out to the cylinder wall...........he said about 70cc would be good.
He also mentioned that the cylinder walls were realatively thin...being in the range of .160 to .178 but said the quality of the castings he's worked on were excellent.
While talking about the block he said that anything above 10 to 10.5CR he would recommend O ringing the block..............I already have one 351 block that is O ringed.....................and that ain't cheap............
A lot of things to think about and since I'm going to look at a running 300ci motor this weekend...............if I can get it cheap enough I may just start getting more knowledgeable by bringing it home and tearing it down.
The CNC Router was interesting..............but not using any lubricant is kind of dumb............you could see where it was skipping because it was dry................and yes they are very reproducable..............but I like doing that kind of work myself rather than spend the money having someone do it for me............plus I can make changes and take it to Gromm for flow testing.......................still a lot of things to think about and I don't want to spend a lot of money..................................as I will need it to by the really good six.

 

yeah.. I've had just a few parts from over there but it's pretty obvious that those aussie's really take their casting work pretty seriously. I'd nearly kill to have a set of those CHI 3v heads on my bench. lol

I've also heard that those blocks don't allow too large of a bore as well. I still went to .060 over any ways though. If I would have cammed it up for high rpm.. then I would've surely filled at least the lower 1/3 of that block to stiffen it up a bit.

I did notice that dry cutting and repeated gouging right at the same point as the machine paused before the next pass right away too. I just assumed that the lube was shut off to get the vid made and that the machine had a slight calibration or program flaw.

And I do agree.. there's not much fun in letting a machine take all the glory. Sure as hell wouldn't mind starting out with a CNC'd head to work from as a baseline to develop a purpose built port design though.

I really do like the idea of that motor in a Maverick/Comet though and will have to keep an eye out for deals when I rummage through the old scabber type bone yards.. which are fast becoming fewer and further between these days. A 5 speed behind one of those would definately make for one very unique ride.

Anywho.. good luck on the hunt and I'll be watching to see how you get along on the project as it brings back fond memories.

PS. IIRC.. Isky has.. or at least used to have.. a tool that you could either purchase or rent for o-ringing blocks. With studs and a copper head gasket.. I don't see how you would need it with those lower compression ratios. But.. I guess it is a pretty damned long casting though.. so maybe the gromm guy has you covered there. I would also have to guess that any of the aussie parts would be fortified in that area too though.. and the concern may be moot if you end up with that hardware.

EDIT: on aquick search I found this.
http://www.iskycams.com/pdfcatalog/2004-05/page16.pdf
Seems to be an older ad though and you'd probably need to check their latest catalog or call to see if they even still make.. or rent it. You might also want to check into Cometic's ability to make one of their gas filled firing ring setups for that head too(if they even make a gasket for it to begin with).. can't remember what they call it but sounds promising despite being so pricy at about $200 per gasket for a V8 last time I looked. And on the plus side.. it's only got 6 cylinders.. so you get to save 2 cylinders worth of time/cash on that build. Now if we could only figure out a way to shorten it up to turn it into a 5 inch stroked 4 cylinder. lol

 

Fascinating conversation. I'm looking at swapping a 200 for a 300. One question. What's the best thing to start with? Ignition, intake, exhaust? Or something else? Ok, maybe more than one question.
Thanks

 

I was not able to make a deal on the mod'd six and the guy has sold the Altered complete with spares.............................and the motor I looked at was frozen tight..........................so as soon as my knee gets better I will continue racing this season on my re-freshened 408 then decide what to do at the end of the season.

Take a look at this article, it may give you some inspiration;

http://www.carcraft.com/featuredvehicles/ccrp_1108_1971_ford_maverick/

 

Sorry to hear you lost the engine. Also, that was my inspiration. Thanks. You guys are a big help.