I am looking at picking up a 93 F150 needs a little work. Since I will be pulling the motor I am wanting to do a cam, gt40 heads and headers possibly little more. So I got to thinking the heads I can get from a explorer so would it be at all possible to buy a donor explorer pull that motor do the work to it swap it and the MAF from it into the F150? What yr did they start running MAF on the Explorer?

 

An Explorer motor without any upgrades would be a step up from your truck motor and it will work with the existing truck EFI system but you would have to swap the truck intake, accessory brackets, and pulleys onto it to make it compatable. All light trucks built after 1996 were OBD-2 so the EFI system on the Explorer won't easily transfer to your truck you would be better off finding an OBD-1 MAF pickup with the same trans as yours top pull wiring and computer from.

 

I have gone through search all over and now luck on really finding a page that has speed density compatible parts. I would like to do a mild build. I know MAF builds but not so much on speed density. I would like a build built around a cam comparable to the e303and f303 cam but I dont know what speed density cams would compare to something like that. I been through hundreds of pages reading and only pick up peices here and there but nothing that says what it compares to for a maf motor.

Is there any intakes for a speed density? I dont plan on HUGE power gains and I have read you dont have to go to maf to make power gains.

 

The Ford "Alphabet Cams" are not SD(speed density) friendly and also not really that truck friendly unless you specifically set it up for drag racing.. which doesn't sound like your intention. Even a lightweight 2wd reg cab pickup weighs 800-1000lbs more than a Stang so the combos that work well in the car feel sluggish in a truck, you have to either modify your expectations and/or use more displacement to get similar results in the truck. If you compromise a little bit however you can improve performance quite a bit over stock so it's not totally hopeless, the truck will need 3.73-4.10 gears however regardless what engine package you put together and that could be a pretty big jump from the stock ratio your truck came with from the factory.. but it's absolutely positively worth every penny. Do not fear the gears especially when the 5.0 is under the hood.. this motor makes its best power above 2500rpm so for a performance setup you want to keep the engine spooling a little more, but you don't need to go too radical to make a LOT more HP than stock. For example my truck 5.0 has the Comp 35-349-8 in it which is a high lift "HO cam" if you like, it still idles pretty much like stock and produces decent low rpm TQ(with long tube headers) but it makes a ton more horespower on the topend.. in the neighborhood of 260-275hp.. with the stock truck heads and intake on it. With GT40 heads this motor is making over 300hp easily.. no other changes necessary, and the truck intake is actually plenty big enough for this power level and more so there's not much else needed. Now I have MAF on my truck, it's a conversion kit I put on it 10+ years ago, but with an SD friendly cam like this you could get similar results on your truck. I guess you want to know what makes a cam SD friendly, basically it's got to maintain a steady vacuum signal so forget about anything that produces a rough idle, the cam has to have at least 114deg LSA and no more than about 210deg duration at 0.050" valve lift. There are also some 112LSA cams that may "work" but they will have even less duration and if not it starts to get into an area where you have to live with a somewhat rough idle and some occasional stalling.. which isn't exactly desirable in a daily driver.

 

Ya I knew the 303 cams were not SD friendly just didnt know if they made a SD friendly cam that would be comparible. My other options is a 95 with a 351w and from what I am reading the 351w is a better option to go with and its already maf so no need to change it over. So I may try to go that route

 

When swapping the explorer motor in, I'd personally keep the intake. No real need to swap back to the truck intake. Just use the explorer throttle cable and bracket.
You can even turn the intake 180* and have the tb on the same side as the airbox. Gotta turn the elbow also or get creative with the cable bracket and remove it like the lightning intake (maybe get a mustang egr delete plate or find a 65mm egr plate cheap)

Any engine is better then the stock 302 truck motor.
Wasn't sure if the 351 ever came with mass air though. The other guys will jump in.

I'm about to do the mass air conversion to my 91. I'm getting excited. Next will be stainless headers and complete stainless exhaust. I'm hoping to get the time this week into the weekend. Weather needs to cooperate though.

 

Hmm I may have to look into that. Would be weird that they made the 302 MAF but not the 351 on the same years.

 

Looks like the 95 with the 351w is SD looks like I may need to convert it. I want a good moderate build something around 350hp maybe. The truck is my DD and toy I wont be pulling but few times a year so.

I been searching through MAF conversion pages and found bits and peices but not actual complete full list and a DIY write up. They need a sticky of this since so many people do it and a parts list.

 

Easy to do.
Get a maf 302 computer for the trans you have.
Get maf pigtail for the mass air unit you're using.
Get injector harness from any sefi ford (to have all the wires you need)
Get a pigtail from any eec4 computer for the pins.

Youre going to need to repin a bunch of wires. I'll post them later on my build post.
Go here to see which ones. You're going to have to combine the maf 94-95 pinout with the e4od for the 89-95 mass air.
Ford Fuel Injection
Then add the injector pins and maf pins.

 

The parts list for a MAF conversion is short, you need a MAF computer that is compatable with the transmission in your truck*, a matching MAF meter**, and an aftermarket overlay harness if you want a plug and play operation. There is no plug and play option with parts from a donor truck, the wires needed for sequential injection and the MAF meter don't exist in the SD truck harness and even if you find a MAF engine portion that will connect to the existing chassis harness in your truck, those wires still don't exist from there back to the computer so they have to be added manually.. which involves dismantling the EEC connector and inserting wires with pins attached that you source from a donor vehicle. That's it though there are no engine related parts that are MAF specific.

* The most common automatic transmissions in these trucks are the 4R70w and E4OD both of which are electronically controlled by the engine computer. Of these two the 5.0/4R70w combo is most common and while there are 5.8 version as well if you're building beyond the limits of the stock fuel system(~300hp) then it doesn't matter if you use a 5.0 or 5.8 computer because it will have to be tuned anyway. If your truck has a manual trans then you could also use a Mustang EEC and that's a bonus because they're all compatable with aftermarket tuners and the calibration files needed are easily accessed from the web.

** The computer holds the MAF trasnfer function so best results are with a matching computer/MAF combo or the exact pair a vehicle was factory delivered with. Companies sell oversized "calibrated" MAF meters but this is really a bit misleading, what they are really selling is a scaled meter that tries to mimic the behaviour of the stock meter while flowing more air so when it's paired with larger injectors the computer can control the motor normally. This "works" meaning the engine runs but the further away from stock the motor is the worse the results at anything below WOT. You can use any MAF meter and injector size you want but you'll get better results by giving the computer the correct data for the parts being used.. which is what tuning does.

 

How would a mild build to start with say a cam (not sure on what yet) gt40 heads (ported havent decided), long tubes maybe throttle body & spacer (are they worth it?) also is there anything I can do with the stock air intake to help it breath a little better or is the stock one ok? Also what size exhaust should be ran and should I run x pipe or y pipe?

Buy me a spare 351 strip it down and build it up while I part together a MAF conversion and prolly do a mild tranny build. Basically I want the truck to be a toy in a couple yrs after school and i start on my reg cab short bed 6.0 build

Also would the gt40 intakes work also?

 

I just bought a 95 F-150 parts truck that has a 351 with mass air to swap into my 93. they are out there at least in California anyway.

 

I wish the 95 I am lookin at has MAF

 

Yes that's worth it easy... except for the TB and spacer. The stock TB will support 400hp and the spacer is a gimic that does nothing but lighten your wallet. The stock cam is the first bottleneck in these engines followed by the exhaust and stock heads when you're talking about the 5.8, so you stand to see impressive gains with just those few changes.

Stock air intake is decent, use an aftermarket drop-in filter and change the intake snorkle(that piece that comes up over the rad support) to the version that is used on the 4.9 and 7.5 trucks. When you see it you'll know why.

Longtubes and a single 3" with all mendrel bent tubing will be all you'll ever need, but if you have a muffler shop bend up something for you dual 2.5" is the next best thing. There are no X, H, or Y pipes made to fit trucks of this vintage with longtube headers so you're on your own there, but longtubes are easily the best option for "truck power" so it's worth the effort.

Yes with a 5.8 specific lower, these are rare and expensive when found however so it's more cost effective to get a complete aftermarket intake manifold like the Pro-Products Typoon or Edelbrock Performer.

 

Wow thats all great info thanks alot. I was looking at youtube and ran across this cam on a SD 5.0 Crower 15511 - Crower Performance Level 2 Camshafts - Overview - SummitRacing.com It says 5.0 but are the 5.0 and 5.8 cams compatible?