Ford Built the Strongest Engine Ever, Offenhauser Made it Even Better!

In this episode of Dentside Depot, we are gonna take our Ford 300 engine from mild to absolutely wild using all of Offenhauser's super amazing made-in-the-USA parts, including their dual-plane intake manifold, valve cover, air cleaner, the cover, so stay tuned. We are going to transform this Ford 300 to make it absolutely awesome. And to catch you up really quick on this project, this is our RideTech Suspension Swap F100 that we are working on that I am keeping the original Ford 300 engine and the S-Rod four-speed Tremec T170 factory overdrive transmission in. I'm the first person ever to put this engine in this suspension system, and now we're gonna make this engine look absolutely awesome. So we're gonna do a complete transformation here, so let's go over all of the parts. And also, we're going to have a giveaway associated with this video as well, so you're definitely gonna wanna stay tuned for that. Okay, and the first part that we have is Offenhauser's side cover that goes, obviously, on the side of the engine. Now, this is cast in the USA, made in the USA by Americans in California, and this comes in two different versions. You have the polished version that you see here, and then there's also the non-polished version, and you can paint that if you want to or do whatever you want. So that's definitely a really cool-looking part. Next up, we have the Offenhauser valve cover, and this is a really sweet piece. It's also a little bit taller than the factory one, so if you're running different rockers or whatever, there'll be more space underneath. Again, this also comes in polished and non-polished. We have the polished version here for our setup that we're doing. We'll be installing a Holley carburetor, of course, but Offenhauser also offers this really cool air cleaner cover that we're gonna be putting on, which is definitely a really neat little piece to kinda top it all off there. But before we can put that on, of course, we also would have to install the intake. Now, Offenhauser's come out with this new dual-port intake, which is more of the square-bore style, which is more in line with what modern intakes look like, instead of having the four separate ports, which I definitely really like, and it's definitely really cool also having the dual-port design. And to top it off, we're gonna have our Offenhauser carburetor spacer that you see here to make sure that we have enough room for the throttle linkage. That is something that you will definitely need when you're installing this. Now, the last thing here, this is one of the craziest car parts that I've really, I've ever seen. Now, this is what's called a turtle, and the way this works is it goes inside of the intake, and essentially it changes the flow pattern of the air going into the intake, and it gives you more power. Now, I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on these things, but if you stay tuned throughout the whole video, we're gonna have a special offer giveaway associated with this cool turtle part. Plus, we will probably have a discount code as well if you're interested in buying more Offenhauser parts for your truck or car. But with that being said, let's get into putting this Ford 300 together. I'm super excited to see all the bling on this thing and what it looks like. And so I think I'm gonna start with the side cover here. Now, I already have the factory cover off, and you can see how much of an upgrade this is over the factory, just this cheap stamped side cover. It did its job for a long time, but now that one is done. We're not using that anymore. Now, how are you going to gasket your side cover while there's two, well, I guess there's three ways. You could pour goop in it, you could use a rubber gasket, or you could use a cork. Let's take a look at the back of this thing. This is gonna be the sealing surface right here. All right, now for me personally, what I prefer is to do this. I like to put a bead of right stuff down on the sealing surface and then place a cork gasket on top and then do sealer again on top of the cork gasket. I've had the best success in eliminating oil leaks by using that method, but go with what you're comfortable with, that's just my personal preferred method. You can see what I've done is I've put right stuff down first and put the gasket on top and just gently push it down. And then I put a little bead around the top of the gasket as well. Boy, in here nicely. Okay, notice that I also have the distributor removed. It would be really difficult to install this with the distributor in there as well because it does take up more space than the factory one. So just be aware of that when you're doing this, but probably you're doing a whole bunch of work anyway. So you can see these little rubber gaskets I was talking about, they just pop in from the outside and they just make sure that oil doesn't come out from the bolt holes. Okay, and wow, what an improvement that is over the factory side cover. Now, one thing I don't like that I did, I should have just gone with the factory stud here for this dipstick, that was a mistake. I went for looks over function, so I had to space it out with washers until the bolt bottomed out so it could get tight, but not be too tight on the side cover because what you do not wanna do is tighten the living daylights out of this thing because what will happen is the cork will pop out and you will get leaks. You do not need to go crazy tightening it down. The right stuff is going to do the work. When it dries, it'll never leak. Once it is dry, but if you over torque it and that cork pops out, it's game over. You're gonna have to pull it out. You're gonna start all over again and you might've even have cracked the cork or have a break in it and it's just not gonna work right. So I think next what we're gonna do is we are going to put the dual port intake on. Now let's take a look and see what I've already done. Now I've already installed some ARP studs. Now the studs that I used for this were technically for a nine inch Ford pinion support. So I bought three packs of them and they seem to be a good length and a good fit. So obviously you wanna chase your threads before you get started with this. I don't know what we're gonna do for the washers yet. We'll figure that out when we get there, but we're ready to go ahead and pop this thing on. Now we're gonna be using the factory EFI manifolds. So these EFI manifolds will work perfect for the carbureted engines. The only thing is you will notice that there's going to be extra dowel holes that are just simply not gonna be used for your application, but they literally bolt right up and they're gonna be necessary for me because with modifications to this truck, the original aftermarket header that I had no longer fit. So this was an absolute for me. These studs, you're gonna see how easy this pops on here. Literally just lining it up, one side of the stud, the other side of the dowel. And I'm just gonna get one nut on for right now just to hold it in place. And I'll do another one on the spot here with one of these washers that came with the kit that I can already tell is gonna be too small. So I think what we'll probably end up trying to do here is go with the factory washer with the aftermarket studs and see if that works out for us. Okay, so you can see how quickly that went on there and that definitely looks really, really awesome. I mean, that is just such a cool look having that on there. Okay, so what I'm gonna start to do next here is I'm gonna start getting these manifolds up into place and it's gonna be the same thing. I wanna figure out my washer situation. You can see they just pop right up and in and then you gotta get some tension on them with the bolt and the washer. So I'm gonna get these into place and we're gonna see how these fit and move forward with our install here. So this is looking really good. Now I am running into exhaust issues that I'll talk about here in a second, but first let's talk about the washers that I used. So the ARP studs worked out really well and what I did for the top ones was I used the bigger washers that you can see here and then for the studs on the bottom, I used the smaller washers that you would find on the factory equipment. Now there were two studs that they weren't really fitting very well. There was some interference using the bigger studs. So I'm gonna grind a couple of them down a little bit and then for the front manifold, a little bit thinner in a couple spots, I'm gonna machine a couple other washers down just a little bit because I don't wanna put too much pressure on the intake manifold versus the exhaust manifold and take off part of the intake. That would be catastrophic. So we definitely wanna avoid that. Now I was hoping that the factory Y-pipe from Walker would fit in and I thought I might be able to, well, it didn't fit in initially and I thought I might be able to modify the orientation of the pipe going down but obviously this is far from a factory setup that we have going on here. So it looks like I'm gonna have to custom make these pipes a little bit more but that's gonna be a project for another day but I think I have enough room to make it work really without much issue but we're gonna keep moving forward here. We're not gonna worry about the exhaust for right now. Let's go ahead and pop this factory valve cover off and let's put the really cool polished one on. So what I've done is I've used little studs here because the new intake, it's a lot thicker than what a factory one is and the studs are gonna be way better. So what I'm gonna do next is I'm gonna clean this up with some brake clean, make sure all the oil's off and then we'll put the gasket on. The gasket, well, what you're gonna notice I'm not doing is I'm not putting any right stuff on it and that is only because I may need to take this valve cover back off again and adjust the valves a little bit. So this is a fresher engine. It has been run and broken in but I'm not positive on how well it's going to run. So I just wanna avoid the hassle of having to deal with that should it be and I can always put the right stuff on later on it'll only take two seconds. Unbelievable how awesome it is to be totally frank. I absolutely love it. Look at that. Perfect, easy fit with this. Absolutely awesome looking. I mean, wow, that's really, really cool. Now this right here, it has a baffle inside so it doesn't slosh oil up the PCV valve. So we'll get a filter on that at some point and then obviously this is gonna be your oil cap. I need to get a cap for that piece and I'm not gonna bother bolting it down right now. It's just gonna sit. I'll get some nuts on it later on and I'll polish it up here a little bit. Oh, that looks really, really awesome. I mean, that totally changes the whole look of this engine. Makes it look super, super cool. I mean, that is absolutely fantastic. So we're getting close to being done here. So what I'm gonna do next is let's get the spacer on and the studs for the intake manifold and then we can pop the carb on top. Okay, now we're ready to install our Holley carb and you will notice that there is a primary side and a secondary side. The primary side is here. It's actually, there's less air that can flow through and that's gonna help with the idle and that's gonna be the secondary side. So our primaries have to face this side of the dual port intake. All right, so I've already put a gasket on the bottom. Now my spacer plate is gonna go right here. Obviously, I already have the studs installed and then my gasket's going to go on top just like that and we're ready to install the carb. That couldn't get much more simple than this. Just pop it right on there. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and bolt that carb down and then we can put the air cleaner on. All right, now we're ready to install the air cleaner base and the first is this piece right here and pretty simple, it just slips over top. If you want a carb seal there, just remember to put that on and unfortunately, I realized that I ordered the wrong size air filter. Don't have an air filter to install today but we'll at least get this on here so we can see what that looks like, the top looks like and this is really cool. I like that little button as the topper to our air cleaner so that's pretty neat. So I'll have to get that air cleaner ordered up so we have that but wow, that looks really, really cool. I mean, look at all this stuff. I mean, absolutely amazing how awesome everything looks and it's upgraded your performance big time too because now you can run a four valve with more air going into the engine and let's be honest, it just looks totally awesome. So I think what I'm gonna do before we actually wrap this video up and of course, we're gonna talk about the giveaway and we're gonna talk about the discount code. What I'm gonna do is let's get the cab dropped on top of this truck for the first time since all this restoration work has been done and let's see what this looks like with this underneath the hood of the truck. I can't wait. Okay, and this is super exciting. The body is back on the frame and bolted down for the first time and this really, really invasive project that we've been doing with the full RideTech suspension and keeping the 300 at the four speed and installing all the Offenhauser parts is now coming to a close here shortly and everything fits and just looks awesome on this and look, even with the extra tall valve cover, still have plenty of clearance on the firewall and that all looks really good. This truck's super rust free by the way and I have the whole bottom undercoated and everything. Okay, so that being said, I wanna go over a few other things. Now, first of all, I forgot to mention, you do have to plug these ports unless you're using them for something. So I'm gonna just be putting plugs in those personally. You'll need to set up your throttle cable. You'll need to order the correct air cleaner. Obviously, I got the wrong one there. Now, another thing is this intake does not have the water port on the bottom to heat the manifold, but Offenhauser is going to be offering one of those very shortly and I'm gonna show you on this older version dual port. That's what it looks like right there so you can get heat to your manifold which helps these engines run in the wintertime. Not necessary for summer, but in the wintertime, that is definitely something that you might wanna have on your truck. Now, let's talk about the giveaway and the discount code. Okay, so Offenhauser is gonna be giving away three of these Turtles and these are these really cool little inserts that go in the manifold. So the way we're gonna do this giveaway is the first three people that send me an email, densidedepotatgmail.com with a picture of your Ford 300 project and it's okay if it's not a Denside, any Ford 300 project and you tell me that you want the Turtle and you wanna buy some Offenhauser parts, you're gonna get one of these Turtles. So it's gonna be a first come first serve basis with people that send me an email with their project pictures, you'll get one. In addition, the discount code is going to be for everyone. The discount code is DSD10. So Denside Depot 10, but it's DSD. So it's the acronym, DSD10 is the discount code and anyone can get 10% off any of these super awesome Offenhauser parts. And I'm gonna put all of these links in the description down below. So every single one is down there and you can use the code at checkout to save 10% on your parts. So with that being said, I wanna give a special shout out and thank you to Offenhauser because all of these parts are really gonna make this project truck look absolutely awesome. And I just think this is the coolest thing to go through all the trouble of doing a full RideTech suspension swap, but then not falling into the trap of just throwing a Coyote engine into it like everyone else does. I wanted it to be unique and this is the first one that's gonna have all of this. And these Offenhauser parts were absolutely critical to make this truck look and run as awesome as it should. And I cannot wait to take this thing out for its first drive, hopefully within the next few weeks. So with that being said, remember to like and subscribe and keep restoring those classic trucks.