Order of engine mods on 92 5.0?

in order (first to last):

heads, intake, cam.

They are not very hard to change, just make sure you have the right tools and set aside a weekend to do the heads, and then maybe a day or so to do the intake, possibly a weekend to do the cam. If this is the first time obviously . . .

If your just piecing stuff together, get a few different parts.

Also, when you do the heads, you will need new gaskets, new rockers, not sure about pushrods, oilchange etc.

Intake, new gaskets, some maybe new gaskets again.

Cam, will need a few gaskets, new timing set.

Im probably forgetting a few things, there is always something else you need once you get into it seems.

How fast are you wanting this car to go? What percentage street/track type car will it be? These answers can steer you into some better parts, and maybe save you some cash along the way, and be faster to boot.

If your going to do a heads cam and intake swap. I would save up and do the whole swap at one time. That will keep you have having to buy gaskets more than ones.

Is there anything done to the motor yet?

I went with gears, intake manifold, headers and exhaust as my first mods. I installed heads last and made big gains from them because I already had the supporting mods.

trick flow is great and yes its easy to do buddy. if your familiar with engines. if you never pulled an engine or only done oil changes in your life then i would recommend someone help you

KyleEBK said:

Ok thanks for the answers

It has headers and h pipe and flowmaster exhaust and knn cold air filter also has 3.73 gears
not sure if it has a good distributor
has 31 spline something i dunno what if you know tell me?
it has king cobra clutch and pretty sure its just a t-5 transmission

90% street 10 % strip

I guess if cheaper parts can be gotten that perform better let me know what they are i just thought trick flow was easy and already tuned and such

in the ultimate end i would like to put a supercharger on it, nothing big though

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31 spline sounds like it has stronger axles in the rear end then. With it being that much for the street, I would use a gt40 style intake with the lower ported to the heads, and some afr165 heads. If staying NA, id opt for the 58cc ones, eventually get a good cam/custom is best. Ive heard of many with these heads and intake with stock cam still making about 300 at the wheels.

If definitely going with a blower, best intake for a blown 302 in my opinion is the holley. Dont have to put as much effort into a blown engine, the blower does most of the work, some trickflow/afr heads would work, with a simple cam(tfs1, f cam, etc.).

I went the na route with my 306, and really did some homework on making things match, and its a blast on the street. std rated at 350rwhp/406rwtq. You should almost always get a chip tune by someone who knows what they are doing, a good person can pick up 10-15hp, I picked up a alot more than that on my tune.

KyleEBK said:

I have a 92 5.0 and it has 8.8 rear end aluminum driveshaft upgraded suspension

I would like to do some mods on the motor, bene looking at the trick flow stuff

I cannot afford the whole kit however, and want to do it piece by piece, which order should i install the components?

can the car be run between modifications? I know theres guides all over maybe for this I jsut want to know which order to purchase and install these parts and still be able to drive car between mods...

also, are these parts hard to put on? I have some skill with gettin the hands dirty but not alot

I have another car so its not my daily driver

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We've all been where you are. In fact, im right there with ya. Simply not enough money to make everything happen the way you want it to.

My 2 cents is this. Youre wasting your time buying things piece by piece. Consider this: nearly every component between the airfilter to the tailpipes is designed to flow about 150-200 cfm, which corrolates to the stock 230 hp. Sure theres some horsepower to be had by swappin out the exhaust (ive done it and love it) and underdrive pulleys, etc...

But once you get done with the small crap, youre looking at the majro problem. E7TE heads. 1.78 / 1.46 valves and small, long tubes, yielding big airflow at low lift (yields big torque down low. good for trucks. in fact, the TE stands for truck engine...theyre truck heads. this is why you can pull 5th gear at 900 rpm) but it maxes out at about .4" lift or whatever and then its done. Then you have the stock HO intake which is sized to match, and all of the ports will flow different numbers stock (this is a great thing about extrude honing because they can hog out some ports more than others to equalize the airflow).

My point is this. you need to mod 5.0s from the inside out, not from the outside in. Go ahead and put a wicked cam, track heat intake, 3" exhaust, and 500 degreees timing. Itll put out maybe 260 hp. Maybe. The heads simply will not allow huge power production. So the solution is to pitch em in a furnace, turn them into silverware, and start from a clean slate. The cheapest heads out there will be GT40 or GT40Ps from a junkyard. I myself just bought a 99 exploder motor (GT40Ps and a slightly crappier version of the 93 cobra intake baby!) for $350. It was in a rollover and the starter ripped the block up real nice, but the heads and intake are good. These are the deals you need to be looking for if you want it done cheap. Naturally, you get what you pay for, and GT40Ps from a jy wont flow what any of the big name aluminum heads will flow (yielding a corresponding lower hp number), nor will it give you the weight savings. ONLY AFTER THE HEADS ARE SWAPPED OUT FOR SOMETHING BETTER WILL ALL THE SMALL MODS REALLY SHINE.

Also, as mentioned, youll be buying so much small crap along the way. These cars are old. Youll tear into it and find 15 unrelated problems that you "might as well fix / mod while youre in there" (hate that sentance). Or youll drop a screw down the intake. Or youll drop the MAF and break the electronics. stuff like that. Limit your chances of making a mistake and do the job right ONE TIME. You have a dd (that was the first thing i was going to recommend you do. i got my truck for $300. $1 per cubic inch baby! starts every freakin time, first crank) so you can even take your time. Thats really good.

hopefully that dd of yours can negotiate those pesky junkyard entrances, and has a big enough cargo area for motors from the jy! If its a car it better be a reeeeaaaal beater because the junkyards dont have much mercy for motors. they plopped my exploder motor in the back of my truck and i drove home with a trail of coolant and oil because it was just sitting on its side pissing its guts out all over the bed. and thus, the road. lol

Last thing. Assemble everything you need ahead of time, and enjoy the 5.0 right now because it works and its more fun than your dd (hope so, anyway). Once you have everything, get wrenchin!

As one or two other people said, accumulate all of your parts before you dig into the engine. Buy the cam today, the heads next month, the intake next year (or at whatever interval) and do the whole job at one time. It makes no sense to keep tearing the engine to install parts that could have all been installed at once.

I accumulated parts over years before I installed mine. I took my time and made sure that the parts I had were what I wanted. I have read thousands of threads about cams, intakes, heads, MAFs, injectors, fuel pumps, the list goes on and on.

do you want it painted black? like, touch-up in some areas and get rid of some fade? or totally different color? if you dont give them a rolling chassis, and you want a totally different color, there will be some black leftover, namely in the engine bay, door sills, gas cap, hatch lids, etc. If you want a different color, nows the time to tear it all down, plop the motor on a stand where you can work on it standing up straight (not hunched over a low-riding car), and send the paint shop a roller.

I'de go as far as buying differnt parts here and there when you have the cash, but I cannot see buying either of the 3 major componants of the H/C/I and installing them one at a time. Do it once and do it right

When you do the h/c/i swap, you will need to pull the waterpump and timing cover to get at the cam. At that point, you should plan on replacing the timing chain and waterpump while you are that far into it.

Other than that, you will maybe want to look at some 24 lb. fuel injectors (19 lbers are probably sketchy with the tfi kit), a bigger Mass Air meter (calibrated to whatever injectors you end up running), and a bigger throttlebody.

The good news is that you can find most of this stuff used for a very fair price. The bad news is that you will probably want a professional dyno tune with a custom chip once this is all done. Most (not all) who do an h/c/i run into some measure of drivability issues due to the ECU not being able to accurately compensate for the changes made. In my case, the car runs strong, but has cold startup problems, stalls when coasting to stops, and has a fair amount of power to be gained through a tune judging by the track times I ran with it last fall.

KyleEBK said:

I forgot, it also has underdrive pulleys and some hyperdrive chip in the computer

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has no one else noticed his car has a hyperdrive?

she'll make .8 past light speed.