My first EFI swap

Closenough

New Member
Jan 16, 2012
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I'm building a 50 ford truck and plan to use as many parts from around the garage as possible. I picked up a rebuilt 5.0 at a garage sale, all parts seem present. Block #E7TE with E6SE heads, I have an HO 5.0 intake also. I heard some engines had different firing orders and you couldn't mix and match intakes. Could someone shed some light on this and guide me in the right direction. This is my first EFI project.
 
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5.0s in everything but Mustangs (and MKVIIs) used the old 302 firing order; 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8, 5.0 HOs used the 351W firing order; 1-3-7-2-6-5-4-8. Depending on which computer you use, it's to your advantage to run a matching firing order cam. You *can* use a Mustang computer with a non-HO cam, but idle may suffer a little due to fuel puddling. The intake manifolds just have to be matched upper to lower-that's really all that matters. The non-HO 5.0 passenger car intakes were a little different I think, but they can be ported just like the standard Mustang HO intake. The truck intakes OTOH, were extremely long runner and built for torque. There used to be a company that made box uppers for truck lowers and they flowed tons of air-especially on supercharged apps, but I doubt they're made new anymore...unless you're a fabricator, it's eBay for that particular setup. Otherwise, 5.0 intakes are readily available-and tons of folks part out their old combos with ported intakes and such all the time. But, depending on your expectations, you might wanna look into an aftermarket version anyway-like TFS, or Edelbrock.

If I had any other advice to offer though, I'd say ditch those E6 heads...they're only good for a boat anchor or door stop...crap for flow because of the shrouded intake valve. They can be made to flow decent, but the amount of work involved negates any positive outcomes-unless you're looking for a wheezing engine with no top end. At least look for some GT40s or GT40Ps, or go aluminum.

The electronics and harnesses are in several cars, but since most mods are focused on Mustangs, I'd recommend getting a good used harness from one if you can find one for a good price. The t-birds, trucks, and other vehicles wiring had slightly different pin-outs and the computers used different programming...
 
Here, check out this site:

www.oldfuelinjection.com

...it used to be ford fuel injection, but now it's the above...anyway, it has a pretty good bit of info on there about how to convert and pitfalls to avoid. It also goes into a pretty good bit of detail on theory of operation. It helped me out immensely when I did my EFI conversion in '06.
 
If I understand correctly the cranks your the same in all 5.0 with the difference in cams equalling the differant firing order. If I have a crown vic motor I can simply change the cam to attain the HO firing? I'm not really concerned with max performance from this engine, I'm more interested in reliability, building the truck for my teenage daughter, torque and HP not a real concern.
 
The cranks are all the same from '82-'01...and you are correct about the cam changing the firing order-yes, if you change to an HO style roller cam in your crown vic engine, it will be fired with the HO/351W firing order. If all you're concerned about is reliability, then the E6 heads will be fine. Just go on that website I linked up above and it'll basically tell you everything you need to do when performing an EFI swap. Not saying that you need to do everything on there that he does, but it's a pretty good guide.