First off, I dont even have a mustang....YET. But I do plan on buying one and then putting a cam in it. What I wanna know is what is necessary to put a cam in. Do I have to take off the whole front clip, take out/raise the motor?
Remove....intake mani, lifters/pushrods, distributor, water pump, timing cover, timing chain, and the radiator so you can pull it straight out. Thats the real dirty basic....do a search on here or google there's probably a million 5.0 cam swap articles.
Before doing a cam, you might consider some other stuff such as rear gears, subframe connectors, short throw shifter, rear upper and lower control arms, etc etc. If you do the cam I wouldn't leave the stock intake on either.
what cobradvm said..............a cam should come after you have made enough changes to the stange to handle it correctly..............hotwheels of insanemustangs.com
actually, for a stock motor, the stock cam grind is very good. If you dont end up loosing power w/ a cam change, you will only gain a few hp. like mentioned above, do heads, intake, tb, maf, injectors, etc before (or at the same time) as the cam.
don't screw around with just a cam...if you wanna do a cam, just pull the motor and overhaul it...i know a buddy of mine who just put heads, cam, intake, and exhaust, and left the stock bottom end in...he was putting down mid to high 12's with 3.73s and 275/45/17 STREET tires in the rear...the 5 liter is a stout little motor...just put some heads, cam, intake, and exhaust on it and drive it cause the stock bottom end is next to bullet proof unless you do some major forced induction...you'll be impressed with the power! let me know how things go or if you need advice...later!
Before anything, do a compression and leakdown test to see if the block is even worthy of serious modifications. No need to dump money into h/c/i if it won't be able to handle it.
if you're asking how to do a cam, i wouldn't recommend doing it yourself with no experience doing it. It has a good chance of becoming a nightmare job.