After renting a truck over the weekend, basically a new F150 with only 3K on the odometer, know it's not fair to compare, and because of the weight is still not a dragster, but at least the engine makes the sounds and it starts to pull a heck of alot better than mine with 185 K on the odometer and 20 yrs older ....

Maybe it's time to start finding out - hopefully short of a full rebuild - how to get some umph back into her .....

After pulling the trans and other stuff under there, noticed it seems like after the Cat, the pipes downsize a fair amount, haven't measured them, but is this possibly a known bottleneck ??

 

The exhaust wouldn't cause your truck to run that bad. How bad of a dog is it? I'm new here but I think typical exhuast pipe is like 2.25''

 

The easiest and cheapest power improvement I've ever done on an older truck is to check the ignition timing. My 94 5.8 was at 7 degrees advance at 160k factory is 10, I bumped it up to 12 and was very happy with the improvement.

 

Replaced the timing gears on mine. Made a bloody huge difference. :-p

But more on topic.
A new 5 litre f150 doesn't have the same windsor lump or the same drivetrain, so it's a useless comparison.
How slow is it?
Theese trucks in stock form with the 302 windsor always was slow, and the automatic gearboxes _really_ doesn't help. And barring some major engine and gearbox work they always will be.

 

Yup the timing is a good place to start. If you want your truck to accelerate faster, then a regear would be a good idea. Stock gears were made to optimize mpg, not so much power and response. But just like others said here, the 302 isn't exactly a "go fast" engine. Hell even the 351w isn't that much of a speed demon stock, but beefed up you can put some serious power down. I don't know what plans you have for the truck/engine but if it were me and I wanted power and speed I'd swap a 351w and build up from there. But short of spending a lot of $$$ these trucks won't behave like any racecar- speed is money, how fast ya wanna go?

 

find a set of gt 40 heads , headers , eldebrock intakes. or get a roller block 302

 

Ok guys I did check the timing some time ago and I was right at about 10 - what the factory says ... having clutch issues now ... anyways I'll have to measure the pipes and see where I'm at. It has sat for awhile, when I get a chance suppose a compression check might not be a bad idea .. Mine is not far different from Big Blue, but only a regular cab. I also had a 94 with the roller engine, and not sure that it made any more power than this one. Maybe a partially clogged cat or not so clean injectors ....

 

Forgot to mention have the 3.55 gears in it now, which should be a good compromise for my purposes .... added a leaf in the rear which I needed for hauling, really stiffened it up ....

 

A new F-150 V6 is pushing 305HP; if it was the 5.0L V8 - it's pushing 360 HP. Your truck when new wheezed out all of 185HP. The new trucks are racecars compared to the OBS trucks.

 

Ian:

It was the 5.0, so that's what another 175 hp will do, eh ? And to make this one get to that point and still get 15 mpg, would take how many greenbacks ?

 

The '92 was a roller block and its equipped with a roller cam. Its downfall is the SD efi, but Conanski can offer you an idea on cams, as I'm sure other members here can. Best bet it to swap a 5.0 cam from either a '94-96.

 

Do some research on Fox body mustangs. They are rockets with the right parts. An old friend of mine yanked the 302 stroked it to a 347. Are heads new cam and switched to a carb and supercharger and that thing was crazy. The bad part about doing this to a truck is getting all the ponies to stick to the pavement

 

360HP is pretty unattainable without doing some major modding, but you can get into the low-mid 200s with headers, a mild-EFI friendly cam, and GT40 heads + intake.

It probably won't be as fast as that 2014 F-150, but it will really wake it up, especially with a manual transmission.

Wait for the seasoned graybeards to popup in this thread tomorrow to give you more advice on where to go while still on a budget.

 

300hp is no problem at all from the old 5.0 but the closer you get to that the less driveable the truck will be unless you dump some money into EFI mods. This is complicated some with the computer controlled transmissions found in most of these trucks, that pretty much rules out a carb swap unless you also swap the trans and it also limits your PCM choices for EFI upgrades.
But there is still a lot to be gained without upsetting the existing EFI system, the #1 biggest bottleneck on this motor is the camshaft, swap in a Comp 35-512-8, add longtube headers and a small(2.5") single exhaust and you will have added 50-70 points to both the HP and TQ curves which is substantial for the money invested. If you want to go beyond this it will get very expensive since both the fuel and EFI systems will need upgrades, but if you do that there is a hugh selection of aftermarket parts that will bolt right on thanks to the 5.0 Mustang.

 

Paul:

Thnks. Since I am running the Mazda 5 spd, at what point do I have to worry about that reliability ? The good news, I do not have to worry about computer controlled anything related to the manual trans ....