Customs Please tell me about ford's inline 300 six?

I've seen one being shoe horned into a late 60's Falcon. It fit without a radiator, but the rad support area was needing surgery to move the rad forward enough for a fan etc.

 

Thanks.

 

Google "In Line Six Performance", they may have info & SPEED EQUIPMENT ! A buddy of mine, a G M guy, drove a milk truck with a 300 in it. He said it was the best engine he ever .

 

After I got out of the Army in the early '70's I worked as a mechanic for a local dairy. We had a boat load of Divco milk trucks converted to Ford 300 sixes. A Divco fully loaded with milk and other products was heavy to say the least and the drivers drove the crap out of them. The 300's took everything the milkmen threw at them and then some. Great engines.

 

The 240 was never used in cars to my knowledge. It was always a truck engine.
You might be thinking of the 200/250 six, which was used in cars up thru the 80's...

 

The 300 is a stout engine. Beware of the EFI version. Head is a different design and not all intakes will fit. No weaknesses or flaws. Lot of transmission options as well. Both automatic and manual.

 

The 240 was available in cars. A buddy of mine had an old '65 full size Ford sedan with a factory 240 and three speed transmission. It was the cheapo two-door sedan base model.

 

The 240 was the only available six in the full-size cars from '65 through '72, then the six was dropped from the line; Ford never offered the 250 in the full-size. Rarely seen, most buyers opted for the 289/302. All I've ever seen one in is taxis and bottom-of-the-line fleet cars. My first ex's parents had a '67 4-door with a 240/C4 (a ex fleet car) that ran over 250K miles but was the worst slug I've ever been in... pulling out onto a busy highway could be a white-knuckle exercise in timing...

The 300 wasn't used in cars because of it's taller deck height; it wouldn't easily fit under the hood.

 

The 300 is a solid low end torque motor. I had one in a '64 Uni Body (nope note stock motor) that I liked driving. it would nearly pull stumps.

I would like to have 8 x 300 Ford rods. They are a 6" rod very stout and easily adaptable to a SBC.

They can be made to be really fast in a light vehicle. When I was testing and tuning for a good friend in the '70s there was an Econo-Rail (that was just the name of the class ) that ran a 300" Ford 6. There was not much that had not been done to that motor. When the light turned green it just evaporated. We would actually leave our pit when it was staging, loved watching it run.

 

300 or 352? i'd go with the six!

 

There's a '62 Sunliner for sale at Gateway Classics with a 240.

 

If that's what it is, somebody swapped it in. The 240/300 didn't come out until '65.

 

you're right. looked closer and its a 223.

 

The 240 and the 300 are EXACTLY the same physical size. Everything is the same size except the stroke of the crank and the rod length. The cars that got the 240 could have taken the 300 with zero issue. But why bother? The 289/302 was better suited to that use.

 

There is no difference externally between the 240 and 300 six cylinders. It's very difficult to identify a 300 vs 240 as they use the same block casting. The front crank pulley can be a clue but not always. Really the only way to confirm a 240 vs 300 is to measure the stroke.

The 240 was the base engine in full size cars to '72 as Steve pointed out.
The very early 240 and the 300 suffered from piston design problems. It seems to be more prominent in the 240s. This design flaw was corrected.
The 240 still used the infamous Loadomatic vacuum timing advance throughout the 60s whereas the 300 used a conventional vacuum mechanical advance. When dealing with these for performance, pay close attention to the distributor.

The 240/300 was grossly under carbureted. Consider as well the 240s used the sluggish LOM advance. Ford Full sized automatic sedans tended to use the 3.00 or so ratio behind the C4. You can easily see the problems with the 240 in full size sedans.....
Under carbureted (this can actually cause poor mileage)
Lazy timing (Loadomatic)
Over geared (Ford's tendency in the mid '60s on to put too high a gear behind an automatic)
You may can get away with that in a midsize or pony car but not a full size sedan.

Some have said and I agree that the 300 should be carbureted as you would a 400CID V8 rather than a 300 CID six.
Gears... these are low RPM engines compared to the high RPM screamers like the SBF. The Big Six is a lot like earlier engines. It's a low RPM engine that likes to operate at higher end of it's power band.

In short, give the Big Six enough gas, enough air, enough timing, reduce the restriction and give it gear....Well, Hold On!
^^^ Ford could not hide this when they went to EFI.

Poor six performance in a sedan is a Ford tradition. They wanted to up sale. The want the buyer to know that they "could of had a V8".

In a truck...well, that's different. The "slug" now becomes the "Big Six".

Towards the end of it's run Ford had a issue with the 4.9 (300 cid six). EFI really woke the 300 six up. Gone was the "log" intake and tiny carburetor. One of the biggest issues with any inline is the uneven fuel distribution through a log intake. EFI helped solve that. The base engine 300/4.9 was out performing the 302/5.0.
Ford had to tame the EFI 4.9 a little to keep it just below the 5.0. (302)

 

As a boat racing teenager I had a 300/3spd Ford van that I converted into the typical hippie van / tow vehicle. Every weekend loaded with gear towing my raceboat 80 mph with the A/C and tunes blasting. Couldn’t kill it.
I’d go with it. Probably easier to do the 302, but why be normal!

 

Surprised the Frenchtown Flyer hasn't commented. Check out the Ford Six Performance website, lot of info on these motors.

 

Worked at the ford dealership in 69-74 , salesman sold the coca-cola distributer 8 new delivery trucks with 302" s in them ! After numerous breakdowns the factory rep suggested swapping the 302's for 300 -6's , after 60 day trial , we put 300's in all 8 trucks , under warranty !

 

Two words for the 300 Six. Torque monster.

 

The Load-O-Matic makes a very excellent distributor for a dumpster. Cut it in half before you put it in there, so nobody else makes the mistake of using it.

 

Back in the old days, I used to drive a beer truck, it was a 64 Custom Cab Ford.. It had a three on the tree with a 300 six. That truck had real balls. When we picked up Stroh's beer my boss always made me get it because the other trucks, which were V-8s, couldn't make it up Bigelow blvd. with all that beer. They were glass bottles and heavy..

 

In stock form, the 300 was a gas hog slug in pickups, the 302 would out run it and get much better fuel mileage. But the 300 was a torque monster, it would pull loads the 302 struggled with.
I'm talking 70's, pre EFI engines. No experience with the EFI engines.

 

I have always heard that a 240 cylinder head on a 300 was the hot ticket to raise compression.

 

UPS powered their fleet with them,I remember standing in the warehouse at Tuban Industrial Ford in Mtn View CA,rows of pallet racks with complete 300's on skids,ready for delivery.

 

That wasn't my experience , had a 79 e100 long wb van , 300 -6 , c-6 2.9.. gear , got 15-16 in town , 20+ on the highway , loaded , towing a 2500 # boat ...would pull stumps , but over 60 , wouldn't get out of its own way ...I've said it before , most trouble/ maintenance free vehicle I've ever owned .

 

Years ago, the boss at the time bought a new pickup for his son that had a two position foot. It was a F-250 with a 300. The son tried and tried to kill it. We had a lot of out of town work at the time and it was juniors job to pull loaded gooseneck trailers to and from the job sites. Finally one day I noticed a new license plate on the front of his truck.
GW...??? I finally broke down and ask him what the plate stood for. "Gutless Wonder" it was no speed demon but it just ran and ran and ran.

 

I believe that was Ak Miller in the 60's. He put it in a Mustang and embarrassed the 390 Mustangs and 396 Camaros at the drag strip. I've got the magazine somewhere but it would take until this time next year to find it because of all the stuff I would wind up reading while looking.

 

UPS, chip companies and bread companies all used the 300 six (or the GM 292) in their big aluminum step vans.. By the mid 1980's, they all switched to Cummins four cylinder diesels (4bt, 3.9L). The fuel and maintenance costs were lower than the big gas engine.

I have a 1986 Grumman step van (Ford E350 chassis) that came with a Cummins 4bt. It was sold to Continental Baking and was painted with Hostess logos when I got it (a.k.a. "The Twinkie Truck"). We drove it as-is for a year. Governed at 55 MPH. Had the injection pump modified, 65 MPH was fairly comfortable - But the MPG noticabley went down and the inside was noisier than a galvanized trash can (everything buzzed, rattled and clanked). Engine is now in an Off-Topic F150 (driven to 37 states so far) and the shell is a sturdy storage shed.

NOTE: In the last few years, I have noticed that the newer UPS delivery trucks have "Gasoline only" stickers. I suspect that the newer "environment friendly" diesel engines, with all sorts of complicated emissions add-ons, are an expen$ive maintenance headache. The modern gas engine up-time and maintenance $avings cancel the MPG penalty.

Russ

 

I think another reason they last so long and minimize problems is the 7 main bearing design of the block and corresponding the crankshaft. This gives super rigidity to the bottom end.
Another factor was use of timing gears, not timing chain to stretch out and get lazy retarded valve timing when it wears.