I'm a Chevy guy looking for advice from some ford guys; I’m helping a friend try to build a 300hp 302 Ford on a budget.  I'm looking for a combination that might work well for him.

We are working with a 302 in a 69 mustang.  It's a completely stock 220hp 2 barrel. The motor has good compression test numbers and is 9:1 stock with 90K on the original motor.


It has stock gears, 273 - 308 and he does not want to put in deeper gears or a higher stall converter.

Any advice on a good budget build?  Since the compression test numbers look good he wants to add a cam, valve springs, carb, & intake comb.  Any advice and tech tips would be appreciated.

Thanks Ford guys.
 

Well, the biggest piece of advice is that since he doesn't want to change the parts related to the increase in power, he'll have to limit what is done to the engine.  High gearing and a tight stock converter will just kill any decent performance modifications.  If he's not changing heads, then a small 204/214 cam, headers, an air gap and maybe a 500 CFM Edelbrock carb would be about it.  And that would still like an 11" street converter (TCI break-a-way or similar).  I ran a similar combo with stock 1970 302 heads in front of a 3.25 gear and it was a nice daily driver.  About 240 HP or so.

A set of small chamber (58cc, no bigger) heads (AFR, etc) with a cam in the 220 intake range, same intake and a 600 carb of some kind would get you near the 300 mark.  The engine would really need to be decked to put the pistons at zero deck to get the full benefit. BUT, this setup would need at LEAST a 2400~2800 street converter and 3.25~3.50 gears with 26"ish rear tires.  Put that same motor in the existing car you speak of and you'll be posting things like "it bangs when he puts it in gear" and "it moves away from a stop sign like it has a dead cow in the trunk".

As an example, the 302 here is 9.5:1, GT 40 iron heads cut to 60 cc chambers, 216/228 Crane cam, 600 DP Holley and an air gap.  The engine makes about 280 HP.  It's backed with a "3000 stall" TCI Street Fighter.  TCI builds tight converters for their off-the-shelf sales and this one doesn't flash to anywhere near 3K behind that engine.  Car drives like a street car.  That may be a bit much, but you get the idea.  The motor is doing temp duty in a race car, but I could stick that whole combo in a car with a 3.50 gear and drive it anywhere.  

Bottom line - performance mods to the engine really need to be matched all the way from the crank pulley to the rear wheels.  If you draw the line on some things, you automatically draw the line on other things.  You can still make the mods, but don't expect to get the full benefit from the work.  

That's my .20 anyway.    

Thought I'd just add - the 302 here was in our 70 Mustang (wife's car).  She drove it back and forth to the track every weekend for two years.  With 26" rear slicks and 4.11 gears in the 8", the car ran 13.03 @ 104 at San Antonio Raceway last fall.  That was in bad air - bad for San Antonio, anyway.  That's about 250~260 HP at the rear wheels, based on 3000ish lbs total weight.