Australian Ford 250 six cross flow motor; rare?

Anyone know if the Ford Australia 250 six engines with cross-flow are rare?

We are contemplating one for a potential project.

Depends on the point of view.  In Oz? Hell no.  Here in the States? Moderately rare.

Fair amount of the guys associated with FordSix.com have imported one or more over the years.  Sadly a lot of the knowledgeable guys have left that site for other forums (or just passed away)

What are you looking to do?

Tree'd by Mr_Asa

Is it a 250 or a 200 motor?

Seems to me a 250 is the same as a 300 except for deck height?

It's called a Barra

The wiki says this,

All Barra I6 engines are DOHC with VCT and contain 24 valves.[2] They are a development of the SOHC "Intech" I6s produced between 1988 and 2002, which in turn are a development of the 3.3 and 4.1 L push-rod flat-tappet I6, developed in Australia as an "Alloy Head" Crossflow in 1980, eventually in both carburetted and injected versions, which itself was developed from the original iron-head cross flow engine from 1976, and which in turn was developed, again in Australia, from the original non-cross flow family of light Ford sixes which originated in North America as the "Thriftpower Six" designed for the original American Ford Falcon compact of 1959, initially in just a 144 cubic inch (2.4 L) displacement.

Pretty sure that is the small 6, 140-200 cu in

bentwrench said:

Is it a 250 or a 200 motor?

Seems to me a 250 is the same as a 300 except for deck height?

Nope.  Literally nothing in common with the 300 other than general configuration and manufacturer.  Oz didn't get the 300 at all (but oh how I wish they would have.  The things they would have done...  I might need a minute in my bunk)

If you meant between the 200 and 250 then yeah, for American engines deck height was the main thing; however, if my mind has not left me, the 250s also were one or two tweaks away from running a SBF bellhousing which made a lot of things easier.  

In Oz things started to differ substantially during the oil crisis.  The 250 that supplanted all of the other small I6s got some small tweaks and some large tweaks, enough that you can still run the cylinder head on an earlier motor.  Any cylinder head after the 250-2V motors were definitely not bolt on affairs.  You can adapt a crossflow head to the early US blocks, but it is more akin to what I'm trying to do adapting the LS heads to the 300 block than swapping heads. 

Swapping the entire engine is about as hard as any other engine swap where you are putting an engine into a car that never came with the engine you're working on.

Gumby was recently attempting this, may have more information.

Someone on here had a early Mustang with one of these swapped in. I'm still kicking myself for not buying it when he toyed with selling it.

Mr_Asa meant to say:

Gumby has done a bunch of research into attempting this, and amassed a small hoard of parts while twiddling his thumbs for 2yrs with a crossflow cylinder head in machine shop jail. He may have more information.

I don't have enough free time this morning to regurgitate a broad lesson, and I wouldn't enjoy trying to do so on my phone either. Waiting on more info from the OP and a real keyboard tonight.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Looking at possibly sticking one in an early Falcon.

I feel that should be fairly straightforward.  

When I had my 200ci six powered Falcon I too dreamt of plopping an aussie crossflow on top. I looked for 3 years for a good head and whenever one popped up on eBay it invariably sold for about the same price as a classic inlines alloy head. I am not sure there are any deals to be had on these. Rare in the US, prohibitively expensive to ship from down under.

Sticking the whole AUS engine in should be no more difficult than any other crossbreed swap.

Rarity and parts availability will be mostly about realizing that all your maintenance and hotrod parts are OZ specific and will need to be sourced from Australia. By the time the crossflow came about, Australia's 250 had left most of the old Thriftpower engine design in the past. Recasting the block meant the bearings and gaskets are all unique. Different bellhousing pattern. Different valve order in the head means OZ specific camshafts. Etc, etc.

On the upside, they were very common over there and have a strong following. Treat it like an imported engine which was never available here and go for it.

Need to fly over there and put a suitcase handle on one and bring it back as checked luggage!  

Note I'm routinely ordering parts from Australia and Japan for the Datsun; so that's not an issue for me.

Tom1200 said:

Note I'm routinely ordering parts from Australia and Japan for the Datsun; so that's not an issue for me.

If you're doing that, you may be able to make a medium-small profit finding the Oz 250-2V heads for sale on OzBay and bringing them over.  Or even just getting some of the performance parts for that head and bringing them.

Trent said:

When I had my 200ci six powered Falcon I too dreamt of plopping an aussie crossflow on top.

Your Falcon was gorgeous. I was sorely tempted to buy it when it was up for sale.

Crossflow head onto a US 200 is the end goal of the pile of parts I have collected. While not quite as involved as Mr_Asa's LS headed 300 project, there are several gotchas which led to many hours of research on Fordsix, and a few OZ based forums. Much of it is related but not truly relevant to this thread since Tom is looking at a complete swap in.

bentwrench said:

Is it a 250 or a 200 motor?

Seems to me a 250 is the same as a 300 except for deck height?

 

Ford 144-170-200-250 were one engine family. 250 had a higher deck I believe.  This one came in Falcons, Mustangs and also Mavericks I believe.   Probably others as well.  200 and 250 had 7 main bearings.  If you could get one of those cool Aussie heads they would supposedly rev pretty high.  Stock heads had an integral intake manifold with passages of worm like diameters.  Clifford Research had some fixes that involved machining and adding bigger carburetors.

Ford 240-300 was a different engine mostly for trucks that needed low rpm torque.

In reply to Trent :

The Inlines website shows the aluminum heads on backorder and I'm told they have been for some time.

So looking on Ebay Oz the newer Barra motors are a mere $500......naturally shipping $700. $1200 isn't outrageous really.

$1,200 for a Barra? That's not bad. I've watched enough Skid Factory on YouTubes to know how capable they can be.

In reply to Tom1200 :

Seriously, look into renting an entire container load.  Last I checked it was $1000-2000 to ship a full container, but that was about a decade ago?  Can't be that much more to do it now.  Buy two dozen motors and appropriate bellhousings, fill in the spaces with full rebuild kits, cams, etc, ship it all here and sell everything for double the price.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Good idea but I don't have the time, space or desire to do that.

Yeah, that was ultimately my reaction as well when I looked into it.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Shipping is crazy at the moment. There is no available container capacity and prices to get them on the water are ludicrous. At least Europe->US, you're talking more than double what it was a year or so ago.