I'm swapping a 1995 351w lightning motor and zf5 manual transmission into a 1995 ford f-150 centurion crew cab 4x4 originally equipped with the 302 ho motor and the E4OD transmission with the factory california? mass air setup. The lightning motor is all factory except it has a ford motorsports roller g303 camshaft and 1.7 roller rockers with long tube hooker headers and smog delete. I believe the original speed density system will not work with this camshaft rocker header setup. Im trying to get some ideas on what to do with the swaps because we are going to put the 302 back into the donor lightning truck. Im not sure if the wiring on the lightning truck is the same as the regular 95 f150? Or which company to go with as far as a mass air conversion. pro m, fiveology racing, mass airexperts? the end result I need to achieve is for the 302 to work in the lightning truck, and the lightning motor to work in my truck with the zf5 manual transmission. Any ideas or previous experience would be greatly appreciated.

 

Wow.. somebody is gonna be pissed off to find a 5.0 under the hood of a Lightning, and that truck was never offered with a manual trans so are you sure you know what you got?

The 5.0HO was never installed in trucks either so I'm gonna assume you just have a '94+ spec truck motor, making it work in the L won't be a big problem, it'll even work "OK" without making any changes but it'll run better with an SD 5.0/E4OD truck computer swapped for the Lightning PCM. IMO converting the Lightning to MAF is more work than it's worth if you're just going to unload it again.

As for putting the 5.8 in the Centurion you don't have to do anything but plug it in, the truck is already MAF so no changes are necessary.

 

Actually a friend of mine is helping me swap everything over into the centurion and Iam giving him the lightning in return it is going to be his daughters first vehicle. Iam going to hang on to the centurion once I get everything swapped over Im not a big fan of the ford automatic od and the 302 in a crew cab with 35 inch tires on it is a little overwhelmed to say the least. But Im just posting this to see if anyone has ever tackeld anything like this and get some ideas and previous experience with what works and what doesnt.

Thanks

 

Marty here , hey i got a 94 centurion with 5.0 mass air i want to build a crew cab lightning .in your post Paul O"brien said just plug the 351 in and go.do i need to use 5.0 engine harness

 

Yes. If you have a 5.8 donor motor take the upper intake off and disconnect all the wiring, then put the motor in the truck and reconnect the original '94 truck wiring to that motor. If your donor is an early motor(91 or older) the distributor will still have the TFI module on it and that won't work with the wiring harness, so you will have to either modify the dizzy to accept the later PIP module and harness or source a later 5.8 distributor.