Something about 4 more valves to breathe through.....

 

Ok well my brother is a chebby guy and he will admit himself that with matching gears his v8 wont compete with my 4.9 but it will with a 302 atleast outa the hole

 

it wont win any races but i do like my 5.0 with 4:10s and 265/75 16's on my work/plow truck.

with the plow on the front and a heavy rear bumper and 600lbs of weight in the rear she will push snow like a mother! it likes to rev but it always get the job done and asks for more.

 

Lots of good responses here guys. Lets dig into the torque topic just a fuzz since lots of guys like to say that the 4.9L is better due to it's low end torque.

How many of us here believe that lots of torque is what we need in our trucks? Lets think like we're pulling a load here. Is torque what we want pulling that trailer?

Everytime I see someone start a thread about swapping from a 4.9L to a 5.0L I see guys saying not to do the swap as the 4.9L is better for a truck and torque is always brought up, so lets get down to why.. I'll be back tomorrow. Cheers!

Please note, I'm not saying one is better than the other yet. Offering up a discussion for someone to try to prove why the 300 would be better than a 302 in our trucks. Also, I realize the 4.9L vs 5.0 discussion has been beat up a lot. Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I couldn't help myself. lol

 

Well Travis...Since us gasser guys don't usually fill our tanks with diesel and can crank out 400+hp and get 17+mpg....Here is why....


APPLES TO APPLES/ 4.9l to 4.9......

I like the lower torque of the 300...And what I mean is this; I simply don't have to nearly floor it to get the engine into its' "Zone" or peak rpm band for torque....Now...Once that load gets moving...Well...Thats a different story...

A freshened up 300/4 speed/4.10 gears.....They will literally idle around with a pretty good sized load...Whereas a 302, will be constantly bogging in the lower rpm's, because basically....It wasn't designed for it....

Simply put, a 300 is more at home on a farm, idling its life away....

And a 302 is more of a highway use type deal...

Now...This is all merely my PERSONAL OPINION....

**************************************************

Again, as stated before....This is simply a matter of curcumstance AND preference....If you have spare time, get a 300....If not...get a 302....

Personally, in a working atmosphere...The 300 is a better engine....

For simple DD/Highway/Grocery gettin'......The 302 is better....

 

I can understand that and I'm not comparing my diesel to our gassers. I will be back tomorrow to discuss more, but let it be know that my 400hp diesel that gets 21mpg has no part in this conversation. LOL

 

Personally, my father had a '90 F150 extended cab Lariat with a 5.0, it wouldn't get out of it's own way, in fact, the motor blew out under ford warranty; The only thing I remember is it was billowing out smoke from the exhaust from burning oil and antifreeze, and I recall my father saying the 90 Bronco II we had that got around 16-18mpg ran circles as well as pointed and laughed at it on gas mileage.

I have a '94 F150 XL regular cab with a 300/E4OD setup, 3.55 gears, still do get 16mpg mixed driving and have gotten up to 23MPG highway without stops.
Now passing cars and getting up to speed I don't have a problem with, the E4OD kicks down a gear or two and I wind her up a bit and all is good;
Is it as good for passing as the 4.6L in the lincoln continental I drive?
Heh, no; but the 4.6L can wind up to 6,500RPM without redlining, so it's not a very fair comparison.

In all honesty, the 4.9l like was said in an earlier post, is a lot more like a diesel, the end goal isn't to rev it enough that they can hear it in the next county over;
It's different technology.

In my opinion, and through all the trashed and blown apart 5.0's I've seen, I'd never put one in a truck; the 5.8l while obtaining similar gas mileage in a lot of scenarios has a Lot more guts and is similarly reliable to the 5.0; I'd end up with either a 4.9l, 5.8l or a 7.5l in a truck.

In a car though? Sure, I'd drop a 5.0 in, they're cheap and plentiful.

 

after watching the V10 verses diesel posts forever i cant help but see the same things being said here. i'll throw another 2 cents in here. some people dont like to let a engine rev. they would rather have all there TQ at 1500 or so rpm and be happy as a clam because they arent pushing 5k rpms which "some" seem to think is "wrong" for some reason? maybe its just the old days..old wives tails...idk you tell me?

i can tell you every one of my trucks, a V10, 5.4 v8, 4.0 ohv v6, 5.0 all get pushed to 5000k more times then i can count each time i drive. i have them to the floor more then idling. if i feel i'm going to slow or need to pass mash it..let the truck get to the speed i want as fast as it possibly can and continue on..and repeat lol 100 times over. does this bother me? hell no i love the sound running up to 5k sounds great IMO and hell i dont see much of a difference in MPG then others with the same types of trucks. even if i did would i care? not really. i do all my maintenance to a tee have i seen any odd issues with any of my trucks compared to any other owners i've run into? nope cant say i have.

they are both great engines and both have there place...cant really go wrong either way.

this said, we recently got our '69 mercury cougar with a 390 big block man does that thing sound sweeeeeeet right before it shifts at about 4900rpms!

i may have rambled...sorry just some thoughts i had.

 

It all depends where you are and what you do with your truck. As mentioned before, the 300 is right at home idling its life away on a farm, not cruising down the interstate with a loaded bed and trailer, although it can if you want it to. DD is completely discernible, because that means something different to everyone. On a daily basis, one guy might be pulling 8k pounds behind his truck, while the next guy might not be pulling anything, and he himself might be the heaviest thing his truck will ever see.

I spend most of my time on our family's small farm, so the 300 is the perfect engine, for me. My dad also has a 302 in his 92 f150, and it just can't compete with my pickup. Although it will do the same work as my truck, it has to do it with a lot more drama.

It all comes down to where and how you use your pickup. I don't need to go above 60mph, ever, so the 300 is my baby. I need a truck that is happy idling away down a gravel road with a mildly heavy trailer behind it, and that is what I have.

 

People like the 300 because it seems to have a bit of an effortless flair about it, it pulls pretty good without making much fuss. There was an equally entertaining thread on the late model page a while back comparing the 460 to the 3V mod motors, and there was one genius up there claiming that his 4.6 3V could outhaul the Big Motor.. because it apparently makes more peak TQ and HP on paper. Well OK.. maybe it does all stock but would you really want to haul a load with the motor spinning 4500rpm all the time or with it loafing along at 2000rpm? I think people like the I6 over the V8s in our generation for much the same reason even though the rpm difference isn't as great, the 5.0 needs 2500rpm to compete with the I6 at 1500rpm for example. The greatness of the I6 is way overblown, it makes great TQ but it's got NO top end power at all so it's a lame dog at highway speeds. It would have been a great motor if Ford hadn't completely strangled it with a cylinder head that is essentially the same a V8 head with two more chambers. Just think about that for a minute, the I6 has 300 cubic inches breathing through the same ports that the V8 only has to move 150 cubic inches through, and these heads are well kown to be restrictive on the V8. No wonder it only makes 150hp. People rag on the V8's for being weak but it's because of **** like this.. That gearing has no business in any truck and as useless as that is with a 5.8 I can only imaging how sad that would be with a 5.0. Yes the 5.0 needs more gearing to get the rpms up a little higher, but just a little not to the redline like some here would have you believe, and with that gearing the 5.0 will do anything the 4.9 can do and then some.. like pass cars on the highway in time measured in seconds not weeks. All that said I'm not a hugh 5.0 fan, I think it's a fine motor for lighter trucks but it's a bit out of it's element in a heavier truck. I'd like to have my 5.8 back because it had that effortless feel about. There is something about a torquey motor that people like.. Harleys have that same I6 powerband and North Americans can't seem to get enough of those. I grew up on big displacement(500-600cc) single cylinder 4 stroke dirt bikes and absolutely loved that big thumpin torque, I don't think I have had as much fun at any other time...with my clothes on.

 

Also, the reputation of an inline-6 design doesn't hurt either. I feel a lot more comfortable driving my 4.9 with 192k miles on it than I do driving my 5.8 with 174k miles, simply because of the engine design. They are very reliable, and don't really make enough power to hurt themselves.
As far as RPM is concerned, it is nice to be able to putt down the road at 1500RPM with a trailer. But that is exactly what you will be doing with a 4.9, putting. Also, the fuel injected models make the torque a little higher in the RPM's than the old carb. engines do, which shortens that gap between 4.9 and 5.0

 

Although I agree that this topic has been beaten to death, this has been a pretty good and fresh discussion so far. A few more thoughts:

- I'm not sure I agree with everyone that the 4.9 is a dog "on the highway." It's all relative. My stock '95 with the M5OD and 2.73 rear axle would cruise effortlessly with the speedo reading 85mph. Above that, you're hitting the aerodynamic wall, but tall gearing helped it run at those speeds right in its sweet spot.

- Regarding the 4.9 to 5.0 swap: A lot of people are discouraged from doing this because it's not a dramatic difference in power. So, someone comes here and says "My 4.9 sucks because it's slow, I want to swap in a 302" - Well, the answer is: "We got news for you - not that big of a difference, and you might be disappointed that you now have to rev higher to get the same crappy power you had before."

 

^^^ +1 for these turds!

 

The crappy power from the early 5.0 or 5.8s can be fixed with very little effort and $$ however.. i.e. a $200 cam swap, and then you have a motor with as much or more TQ as the 300 and at least 100 more horsepower.

 

Again, it all comes down to how you drive, and what you use your truck for. I wouldn't say that either engine is better than the other. They are just built for different purposes. Its just having the right tool for the right job, sometimes you need a screwdriver, sometimes you need a drill.