I am wanting to build more hp and torque for my f150 reason being is to make towing easier my truck is getting old and going up hill towing it fills like its going to bottom out I am replacing the head gasket that what the mechanic told me was wrong with it but I want it bigger badder stronger!!!

 

port head, long tube, cam. . .not a whole lot of power can be unlocked with the I6 without mass air conversion and a tune however. but you can make your pedal feel better with long tube header...and of course port the head while its off.

if you have the dough (lots of it) a turbo I6 is a pretty mean setup.

 

I've heard the long tube headers for this truck aren't worth the hassle because there so hard to install

 

cant believe anything you hear when 90% of the "messengers" are idiots of one form or another

aside from a power adder, long tubes achieve the greatest gain considering workload/performance relationship of any one mod.

 

There is no cost effective way to get any HP from this motor, the cylinder head is grossly undersized and nobody makes a worthwhile replacement. The easiest way to improve towing performance is to change the gearing, these I6 trucks are often crippled with gear ratios that are completely unsuitable for truck purposes, find your axle code on the drivers door calibration decal and compare it to this chart.. Ford Axle Code Chart .: Articles

3.55 gears are a good compromise between power and fuel economy with this motor and that ratio was common in these trucks so you could potentially swap in a complete junkyard axle and be running again in a few hours. If you don't do much highway driving and want to tow heavy then 3.73 or 4.10 gears will work even better but you probably won't find those ratios in a junkyard so you'll have to buy a gearset and have it installed by an experienced shop.

If after this you still crave more HP start looking for a 5.8 to swap in, this motor makes more torque than the I6 and can easily make close to double the HP with cheap performance mods. It's an involved swap but it'll work with your existing transmission so changes are limited to under hood devices.

 

I've been researching these things since I got my truck and it's just not easy to do anything. Turbo is the only thing I've seen done to have any actual gains. Think I saw people claiming 300hp 400 tq out of a turbo 300 truck but tuning is going to be a problem because you'll need some 36-42 lb injectors to make it work and the stock tune definitely can't run it. You may be able to work it with a tweecer or an aftermarket efi kit.

 

Install megasquirt and a turbo.

 

I've looked into megasquirt in the past for other projects but their website doesn't give much info and I haven't found much info on how to use it. Would definitely be fun to make it work and have some power or of one of these things. You could fab a turbo kit out of cheap piping and a junkyard turbo.

 

What is megasquirt I've never herd of it?

 

A simple Google search found this!!!! MegaSquirt - Electronic Fuel Injection Computer by Bowling and Grippo ©2010

It's amazing what you can find IF you look!!!!

 

Aftermarket efi. You can tune it to work with bigger injectors. Should be relatively easy to do on our trucks.

 

If I don't no anything about tuners and desired to go that rout would I be better to do it myself or take it to a shop

 

You might want to just do some learning.

 

351 swap, IDI swap, there's a few things you can do. A turbo is quite a bit of work, and if the tune isn't dialed in correctly it's an expensive mistake. The 351 can be stroked for even more power if needed.

 

I'm with this guy. You can stroke a 351 to 393 pretty inexpensively and it would have more power than your truck will use.