Ford 300

Metalworking Craftsman of the Year, George Britnell's, recent project is a Ford 300 cubic inch inline 6-cylinder engines started in October, 2013. The idea came from an inline 4 cylinder engine he made previously. At first he was only going to add two cylinders to the four design but then decided that he did not want it to be generic. So, having worked at Ford Motor Company he looked at the 300 inline six.

To model that prototype meant that the distributor would have to be mid-engine and that would require helical gears to drive it. There was nothing available that would fit the scale of the engine so George would have to make a set. A contributor on a modelling forum came up with a technique for cutting helical gears with a home-made fixture, so, following that plan, he made the fixture and calculated the necessary dimensions for the gears and cutter. Once the gears were cut he made a small fixture to test the centre-to-centre accuracy before machining the camshaft. The mesh was almost perfect, so the camshaft was made in two pieces and the gear was used as a press fit bushing to lock both halves together.

Most of the model’s components are made from 6061 aluminum while the rest are various metals—1144 steel for the crank, W-1 drill rod for the camshaft, iron for the head and bronze for the bearings and rods. The pistons each have two iron rings. The block is water cooled and has ports drilled so that the water goes through the head and out to the radiator. It has a splash oil lubrication system. Ignition is of the Hall trigger type with one magnet in the distributor and a timing disc with six windows.

To start, George produced a drawing set of 12 sheets in 8-1/2x11 format drawn in Autocad. The total time for drawing and construction was around 1100 hours.