I am working on two projects of interest in my tool and die shop now. One is a nostagic ford T Bird v6 blower conversion to fit a flathead ford v8 , the other is a an aluminum ls6 chevy head to fit a 300 ford. At this time no one builds aluminum street heads for the big ford.

The 300 ford conversion head consists of three sections of a ls6 head Tig welded together forming a water jacked head for street - strip use.Three of the original chevy bolt holes are used as is. The rest are slotted a slight amount. The manifold is fabricated from sheet aluminum to run two four barrel carburators. The distributor shaft is extended to raise the cap above the manifold between the two carburators. Using a hydraulic flat tappet compcam cam with over .600 lift and 285 adv. duration,we estimate over 400 hp on a mild street version. The 300 is going into my 63 falcon ranchero if it will fit. Should be a tight sqeeze wth headers and all. Should be a real nostalgic piece.

Flow testing a previous ls1 version I built showed over 280 cfm of flow at 28" with the stock 2" intake valves at .600 lift. The ls6 head should flow at least 300 cfm with 2.04 in valves and porting. But a high lift is needed to take advantage of these heads. This lsx chevy stuff is a real hoot on air flow and knock resistance. It should really wake up the ford inline. And the ford crank and rods look really tough. My next head project will be a cnc ls6 chevy to ford head conversion for drag racing using a set of damaged cnc heads I picked up cheap with titanium valves and retainers . The damaged sections will be discarded. Rpm should be increased with the light weight valve train, and better flow hoping for 7k rpm.

I would enjoy doing a slant six project given the opurtunity. My younger years were mispent drag racing flathead fords and inline chevies, So I have no manufactures bias .

since you have read the book youve probably seen them take two SBC heads and lop off a cylinder and weld the two together? that seems to be the only way to get around the simezed ports somewhat cheaply. my grandfather has a 235 in his 46 pickup with a 5 speed trans, 2.68 rear and duel intake/exhaust. its not any faster than my 225

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1975 Plymouth Duster,225/6 2bbl. and duels, 904, 7 1/4
1986 Dodge Charger Shelby, 2.2 Turbo I, A525

Welcome to the site. If you do a search, you will find much speculatuion on improved heads for the slant. Two biggest problems, are getting a consensis on what features the head needs, and the cost of making the head. The vast majority of slanters are frugal (read cheap) like me.

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Charrlie_S
65 Valiant 100 2dr post 170 turbo
66 Valiant Signet 170 nitrous
64 Valiant Signet
64 Valiant 4dr 170
64 Valiant 4dr 225

Welcome to our Slanted world...

Sounds like nice projects and some excellent work. The record for porting a Slant head is around 235CFM on a bored 225, which is on track with your mark of CFM per cu in displacement (280/300 or 304/300 vs. 235/240). More typical heads flow about 200-210 CFM. Some blokes in Aussie started a project on an aluminum Slant head, but it has stalled out at the moment.

I rounded up over 20 people willing to pay pretty healthy sums for a well done aluminum head. This is the kind of support out there if someone is willing to take on such a big project.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Depends on what you're doing. For tractor-like grunt in a pickup truck, the Ford 300 pretty much takes all comers, wads them up, backs up, and then runs over them. Its a real piece of work, I like that engine a lot. But the other Ford straights don't really compare to the slant, IMO. I owned a Ford 250 for a while, and although it was tough as nails it was gutless and not very modifiable- the intake manfold is cast as a part of the cylinder head!

GM made a heavy truck six that is pretty somewhat comparable to the Ford 300- the 292. I know it can be found in 60s HD GMC pickups, but I don't think it was ever used in a car and not all that much in Chevy pickups- mostly things like school bus chassis and delivery trucks. But it suffers greatly from being a Chevy. In general, Chevy engines never escaped the compromises from being "the low-end GM engine" until the current Gen-III designs, which are really closer to being true 'corporate' engines than Chevy engines. I have a pretty low opinion of the rest of the Chevy sixes, particularly the splash-oiled POS that Chev-o-philes lovingly refer to as the "stovebolt."

So I would say that while Ford and Chevy both made truck-only engines that were comparable to a slant in stock form (and maybe a little torquier because they're significantly bigger), the slant was the only one that was also a great performer in a car. Just my opinion.

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Ive never been accused of being slanted but have been called off kilter, its a similar dificiency Im sure. My earlier (1960's) inline chevy drag motor, I built with a nickle welded cast iron hibred 2.02 double hump chevy head and home made 3 two barrel ram manifold, was tilted at about 30 degrees to prevent the intake ports from pointing up hill. This 230 ci chevy ran 11.20's mounted in a MGA gas car at Oklahoma City. So slanting is not completely foreign to me.

The Mopar six would require some research to find a v8 with similar bore centers and bore diameter to fabricate a suitable head. The valve order also must match to avoid a custm cam core requirement.An aluminum head is preferred because welding cast iron is a bugger. Head flow is highly dependant on bore diameter because of valve size limits. As a note the inline chevy now has an aluminum head available from Austrailia called the Duggan I believe.

The big drawback with the hibred head is the extensive fabrication skills required for intake, exhaust, distributor, etc. These heads are of crossflow design and all kinds of problems must be conquered. Also, the strength of all rotating parts must be examined if high rpm is anticipated.

When deciding which engine to run , I considered the chevy six again but thought that the larger bore of the ford, also the ls1 valve order matched the ford, bore spacing was .080" too wide. The ford crank shaft looked stronger too but I believe the engine is heavier than the chevy.

Welcome Bill,
I remember reading about your ls1 conversion a year or two ago over on fordsix.com. Did you ever get one up and running? I know it's an involved process. I've been trying to adapt a head to the slant for some time.
You're not likely to find a pushrod V8 with 4" bore spacing so look to fours and sixes.
I got as far as welding up toyota 3TC hemi heads. This requires a custom cam, which I had made.
It's kinda on the back burner now as I'm working on another head.

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Franklin
'61 Valiant

In a similar vein, what about stock head and moderate compression? Like, budget buildup--no head porting, mild cam, single carb, etc. No high rpm either, just a warmed up street vehicle. I presume the 292 and 300 have the edge in power, due to more displacement? I'd think the commonplace of Super Six parts might tip the balance a bit, though, budget wise.

The 292 doesn't breathe worth a hoot, so I wouldn't expect it to respond much at all to mild "warming" things like a bigger cam or freer exhaust (see other posts about the shortcomings of Chevy 6 ports). The 300? maybe. I just don't know.

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I have run 300 Fords in 60s Falcons...

GMC 216, 235, 230 , 250 and 292 in trucks from 52s to 80s.

slants in A bodies.

The 300 Ford 6 rules them all...make mine EFI 5 speed....from the factory....potential for 340 CID....

But the slant came in an A body....hard to beat that.

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

The 300 has a Aluminum race head that will be out soon, the same company that is doing this already has a Aluminum head for the 250 that is pretty sweat with a updated combustion chamber. Shouldnt be tomuch problem getting the 300 to breath good then.


Jess

Let's not forget the king of them all: - The Hudson 308 Twin H Inline 6.

This is the motor that ruled stock car racing in the early 50's (27 out of 29 races in 1954!).

Driving a 1954 Hudson Coupe, Jack Clifford ( Clifford Research ) set a record in 1963 in the NHRA L/Stock Drag Class that stood for 10 years.

Check out what Steve at Uncommon Engineering is doing with the Hudson 308 in the 21st century! Some pretty amazing stuff with an inline six.

www.uncommonengineering.com

Tom

Have you dropped pushrods down on the cam to see if they will clear the cylinders? The 3TC head has the pushrods coming up in the middle of the head, but the Toyota cam is much higher in the block than the slant. Looks to me like it might cause a problem. Just curious.

Still fascinated with standing a slant 6 straight up and dropping a crossflow head like that on it.

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'15 Chrysler 200S V6
'74 Duster 360, factory 4 speed car

Thats a cool looking head. I can really identify with the problems that are involved with this type of conversion. I can see how pushrods up the yazoo could be a problem. The first consern that comes to mind is cutting into the water jacket. I have investigated using the new mopar himi head on the big ford engine, but had a question about pushrod clearence. The mopar hemi would require an additional rocker arm mounted on the intake rocker shaft with an additional short pushrod pushing the exhaust rocker for valve motion. I kind of backed off that idea, but may look at it later.

The pushrods on the ls1 - ford conversion are pretty easy, but the rod is almost outboard of the block and requires notches in the block and a custom 1/2" alum plate side cover with notches to match. All this stuff needs to be sealed with silicon to stop oil leaks (no water problems). I shortened some 440 mopar 3/8 adjustable pushrods to fit. My engine is really getting closer to coming to life. Im porting the ls6 heads now and installing 2.040 intake and 1.580 exhaust valves. I bought some titanium valves off ebay cheap, and have cut the heads and stem lengths to fit. My cam has a really quick lift rate and valve float would be a real possibility at 7k rpm. I liked this combination because a custom cam core is not needed.

I sold the first ls1 head that I built to an off road truck enthusiast and have not heard how it worked out. He was livining in Canada when I shipped it. So I started over with a better flowing ls6 head.Chevy is constantly producing newer and better heads for the Ls engines.
I do have a 63 Ranchero that I restored this year to put the engine in. It looks like a tight fit. I have a narrowed 9" rear and plan on using a beafed up AOD transmission behind it. The old 170 six puffs smoke an start up. I havent found any information on this transplant other than Clifford used to make headers to fit. Just have to wing it I guess. I still have alot of work still ahead. It really sucks to be broke and old at the same time!

I did build a hybred chevy 230 with a 202 v8 head that ran really well till the cylinder walls split. Thats why the ford was so attractive, with .200" cylinder wall thickness. These big inline fords are monsters and cheap. I bought 2 engines for $30.00 and a set of used forged pistons for $65.00 . A .o40 over bore gives me 306 ci. The stock heads are really good, actually flow better than the 289 0r 302 v8 heads.

You must explain how you made your own cam !

Yes the pushrod angles are extreme on the exhaust. The intakes will work with some notching of the block. For the exhaust I used 392 rockers and shafts and made my own stands.
The cam was a long ordeal to get made. I contacted many cam grinders and manufactures in this country. No one wanted to bother with it. If they didn't have a master or if it wasn't a small block cheby they couldn't do it, wouldn't. I explained I just wanted to reverse the lobes on cylinders 4,5 and 6, certainly they could make me a one off billet cam, right? No.
So I did a search and found Tighe Cams in Australia, emailed them and they said no problem. In fact I was not the first to request this valve arrangement on the slant six!
They will make a cam for any thing you want.
http://www.tighecams.com.au/

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Franklin
'61 Valiant