Hemi to be replaced by inline six?

FishOnOne wrote:
I drove a couple of the Ford fuel injected I6 F150's and they both were turds and I drove several V8 fuel injected 5.0 F150's and always felt like they performed so much better. One of the Ford I6 trucks I drove was my uncles/aunts truck when we would go water skiing I would back the boat into the ramp and also pull it out. There was one boat ramp on the Brazos river that F150 I6 couldn't even pull the boat out of the ramp. So we disconnected the boat trailer from that Ford and hooked it up to my dads 1981 Chevy C10 with a 305 V8 2.73 gear and we pulled that boat out of that ramp with no sweat. There were a few I6 die hard's on this site who swore that the Ford I6 was a torque monster, but that one truck struggled to even pull the trailer out of the ramp even without the boat. I want to say the I6 Fords, Chevy's and Jeep engines were prone to cracked heads and manifolds.

I was never impressed with the Ford I6 that had 300 C.I. even when pulling at low rpms compared to Fords and Chevy's similar size V8's.

This is interesting as a friend of mine used to purchase two F150s at a time for his business. He would always buy a stripped down trucks since it was used for heavy work and after a few years the trucks would be all beat up. He should have been buying 3/4 or 1 tons trucks for the amount of weight they would put in the beds but he is a tight/cheap dude and didn't want to spend the extra money.

He purchased two new trucks back in the late 80s (or early 90s). One had the 302 V8 and the other had the inline 6. He said he preferred the I6 over the 302 as he said it had (more getup and go). He could squeal the tires pretty good on the I6 but couldn't on the 302 V8. He kept that I6 for a long time and he says he still misses it. I have no idea what rear-end gears each truck had so that might have been the difference between the two trucks.

My wife used to have a Jeep with a I6 in it. It didn't have that much horsepower but off the line and in lo gear that Jeep was powerful. It ran out of breath at higher RPMs and wasn't fast by any means but those old Jeep I6s would go a ton of miles.

I have always liked I6s as they, for the most part, have good low RPM torque and are naturally balanced. Very smooth running engines.

Burch