Several years ago I purchased a '73 F250 2WD with a 360 V8. The first time I changed the plugs I noticed it was not wired as the diagrams and order on the intake manifold said it should be. I asked some knowledgeable peopleabout it. Their first responses were disbelief. They thought I must have transposed some numbers. When I showed them how different it was two different mechanics said someone knew what they were doing and just to leave it alone. Recently I messed up the order and couldn't figure it out again, but basically it went progressively up one side and down the other except for 2 cylinders which were swapped. I can't find any info at all about this alternate order. I'm curious to check it out and would like to know what advantage it has if any.

 

I've never heard of one myself. The firing order is determined by the camshaft, nothing else, so unless that thing has a custom ground cam in it for some odd reason, emphasis on odd, it's probably just a labeling issue.

IIRC they're were distributor caps that alter the order of rotation, so that the wires are progressively up and down like you described. They didn't change the firing order, just in which way the plug wire towers were linked to the rotor.

Firing orders for Otto cycle V8 engines are the most commonly used 15426378, as Ford lables it, and 13726548, again as Ford labels it, and used on just a few, the 5.0L HO Fords, the 351W's and the 500 Cadillac family and maybe a few more. Firing orders are selected for smoothness of operation and for engine and crankshaft durability reasons, not how the plug wires route. The second firing order mentioned reduces the stress on the rear journals by not having 7 and 8 fire in sequence.

There is another used by racers supposedly to get a little more power. Not sure what it is.

A time consuming but maybe neccesary way for you to determine the firing order is to either pull both rocker covers and check the motion of rockers, or pull all the plugs and and check the order of compression. Both are a direct corollary of the firing order.



Can we get a pic?

 

Been around 360's and 390's all my life and I at present own a '74 F-250 with a 360 and have never seen or heard of a different firing order than 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8.
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But then again there was a couple of twins I knew back in '59 or '60 that had some HOT Fords that they would never lift the hoods on. They was killed in a road race in about '61, but even then no one was able to see under the hood of the PU they was driving because of the contract with the wreckin yard that towed the remains................... They where ledgen's before their time and old timers still speculate about what was under their hoods.

I don't think the 360 or the 390 was availble then but we're talking about strange firing orders.........

 

Maybe he is confused with Dodgy Dodge? only joking, but here is there firing order, i Googled it,

318, 360 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 clockwise

sounds strange, to have a firing order not like factory specs, makes me wonder what a previous owner has done? maybe some custom work in the motor?

also that seems kinda mysterious Big Brown Ford Truck, they never would allow anyone to see under there hoods? i knew hot rodders back then where really into keeping there mods secret, but to have a deal with the wreckers to not allow anyone to see under the hood is kinda spooky, maybe they had some kind of Alien engine! lol lol wonder if anyone got to see under there hoods? wonder what would have happened if the hood got ripped off in a accident! again strange story

some people just have really good ideas and upgrades, that wouldn't seem to work, but they do, and there has been many people in history modding cars and trucks and even motor bikes, and doing it all with zero mechanical education,

check out Burt Munro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Munro

he was a mechanical genius, who did amazing things with that Motor bike, also watch the movie based on him, "The world's fastest Indian"

-Brent

 

I should have made it clear in my first post on this thread that when I wrote that there are not many more than two firing orders, that's what I meant. The Fords 15428378 and the chevys and Dodges 18436572 are the same firing order, it is just a matter of how the cylinders are labeled.

Try it. Relable the SMF with the cylinder number sequence of the sbc. I think chevys alternate from right to left bank, front to rear. You will find that most V8's engines fire in the same sequence.

 

That is an awesome movie. You should listen to it in surround sound too, it'll make the hair on your neck stand up.

Gets me every time I watch it.

 

sorry for being so off topic,

yeah i seen it in theaters, everyone strangely was at least 50-60 years old or older in the audience, i guess my generation (19-20) don't have much interest in that kind of movie, which is really too bad, it was a great movie, i think it was Anthony Hopkins best film, mind you i wasn't a fan of any of his other movies, it actually put a tear to my eye a couple of times, its a really moving movie and story, but it has a happy ending,

also i have surround sound at home, and the DVD version, and i always crank it up when he is going flat out! such a sweet sound! its almost like your there! and it does raise the hair on my neck too!

here is the scene, click the link below, i actually did a big canvas painting of Burt's motor bike racing on the salt flats, its a really neat painting, art teacher didn't know what i was painting, she thought it was a rocket ship? but i told her its the Munro Special (Indian Scout with a air stream body covering) and that the scene was the salt flats, epic painting, and i suggested she watch the movie to get the full picture, tough to paint, had to go by some rare pictures, and memory from the movie,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcFX5HbN2SI


-Brent

 

Watched the clip. Got to me again.

My whole family likes this movie. Everyone I have ever talked to about it says they really like this movie.

 

Not trying to start an argument, but I believe Google’s information is wrong. Ford's 360, 390 is counterclockwise 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8 and looking at front of engine it's 1-2-3-4 on the left bank and 5-6-7-8 on the right. actually the 302, the 360, 390 and the 460 all have the same firing order. The 351 and 400 have a firing order of 1-3-7-2-6-5-4-8 and cylinder configuration. I varified this in my Haynes Manual.

And 1977f150xlt the wreckin yard was owned by their cousin or something. Kinda strange but true.

 

There is no argument. The order of combustion is the same for most V8 engines, it's just the labeling that is different.

The OP needs to check the order that his camshaft times the engine.

 

It was posted twice before and the original poster noted how his Intake Manifold had it written on there as well.

The confusion for you may have come from all the references to Mopars.

As for alternate firing orders there are none for the normal DIY. You can order special cams to seperate the the firing of cylinders 7 and 8, which was experimented with in Nascar. However, Holman-Moody and later Robert Yates eventually just bumped cylinder number 8's compression a tad to help with the lack of intake charge.

Josh

 

Possible that you could have a custom cam w/ alternate firing order. I went through this with my first 302. Not knowing any better, I wired up my 302 following it being swapped into my truck from the Ranchero it came from, it ran very rough. Turns out that the engine rebuilder had used a 351W cam which has a different firing order. Ran much better when I corrected that. I've not heard this done with an FE motor, but I don't see why a cam manufacturer couldn't utilize the alternate firing order. It's been stated here already, but remember that Ford labels it's cylinders completely differently than Chevy's (don't know about Mopar).

 

We need some more old timers chiming in here about that distributor cap that altered the order that the wires came out of it. I could find no reference to it on the internet.

 

Mallory crabcap? http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Mallor...Caps,8043.html

My guess is the distributor was installed with the rotor out of phase so the PO rewired the cap to reflect that.

Most caps have the #1 cylinder marked and also the distributor base is usually marked with a pink dot to reflect where the rotor SHOULD point with cylinder #1 at TDC.

What I would do is find TDC for cylinder #1, pull the distributor and reinstall with the rotor pointing the right way which is roughly 2:00 if looking down. With rotor installed it will be pointed just to the right of the cap clip.

Then rewire the distributor 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8

Josh

 

Why is everyone looking at the cam for firing order? Nobody has mentioned that the cam just opens and closes valves, the order is determined by the pistons, and the crank.
What good would a cam do if it opened valves when a piston was mid cylinder?
Not all V8 firing orders are the same, and much has to do with balance, and when an individual cylinder has to fire. You wont change the cam to make this different, it wont change the firing order, it will cause the piston to hit a valve.
Unless the crank has been changed, the firing order is not different, it just cant be. To the eye, the order of the wires can appear to be different, but the order in which the cylinders fire will remain the same.
Change this and the engine can no longer stay balanced. Change the cam, and you can run an engine backwards, but interposing cylinders still must maintain some symetrics.
Unless you change the throw of the crank, the engines firing order cant be changed.