Ford Duratec V6 engine

The Ford Duratec V6, is an aluminum-block, dual overhead cam V6 engine with a 60° bank angle and cast iron cylinder liners — introduced with the 1993 Ford Mondeo and used widely through 2012 in numerous vehicles by Ford's associates brands, including Mercury, Lincoln, Jaguar and Mazda.

Ford's design brief outlined an engine for front-drive, transverse layouts, short enough for an 11-metre turning radius and with class-leading performance, emissions, economy and durability — as well as reduced NVH.

Interviewed at the time of the engine's U.S. launch in the Ford Contour, head of Ford's V6 program Bruce Coventry noted that Ford had turned to Porsche at a time when its engine development resources were stretched thin. Porsche had already completed the engine's early development — which explains its commonality with Porsche's engines of the period. Notably the cylinder head design and use of a main bearing ladder design both recall Porsche's V8 engine design for its 928.

While primary engineering was thus Porsche-derived, Ford licensed a high-integrity cylinder head manufacturing method from Cosworth, specifically a sand casting process developed by noted scientist John Campbell which used zircon as its casting aggregate, where the mold was preheated and cooled to achieve even temperatures and where the mold was rotated during casting to improve material uniformity and create dimensional accuracy, high strength, and a dense, low- or no-porosity structure — the so-called Cosworth Casting Method.

Inspired by the variable intake system on its 4.6-litre ‘modular’ V8 which used dual intake ports opening and closing so as to vary the effective inlet tract length, with the early 2.5-litre variant of the US-market Contour's Duratec, the torque varied by no more than five per cent from 1500rpm up to 5200rpm. Bruce Coventry said “there won’t be a four-valve V6 that can match our torque curve." At higher speeds, the engine's inlet tract was effectively shortened at higher speeds. The design featured a cam chain vs a belt, an efficient water pump and an over-capacity oil pump.

During its ownership by Ford's Premier Automotive Group, Aston Martin reportedly created a V12 engine by hand-welding two 2.0 Duratec blocks together.

The engine features fracture-split (cracked) forged powder metal connecting rods, and a forged steel crankshaft in two major variants for the 3.0L version: a 232 hp using direct-acting mechanical bucket (DAMB) tappets and a 208 hp variant using roller finger followers (RFF) .

The engines were manufactured at Ford's Cleveland Engine Plant 2, which had undergone a $688M renovation in 1988 when the 3.0L Duratec engine family was under design. Every engine was hot-run on an 85-foot, 34-station carousel that monitored eight critical operational functions for a minimum of four minutes prior to its completion. The plant floor was composed of individually laid cross-cut end-grain wood blocksto eliminate vibration transfer within the assembly area. Approximately 3.5 million 3.0L Duratec engines had been manufactured by late 2005.