I look to be getting a hand me down 1997 F-250 460 5-speed soon. It only has about 160k miles, well maintained & is bone stock. I was wondering what some easy upgrades for more power would be. I've been looking around on the web but everyone seems to have the diesel. I can put on a cold air intake myself & change the plugs but kinda wondering on the other things. Got the below data from wiki on the engine. thanks in advance.

<table class="wikitable"><tbody><tr><td>7.5 L V8</td> <td>1994–97</td> <td>245 hp (183 kW)</td> <td>395 lb·ft (536 N·m)</td></tr></tbody></table>

 

Cut the "horns" out of the intake tube and get a freeier flowing air filter

Bump your timing to about 12* instead of the factory 10* but make sure it does not ping

Do a complete tune up(oil change, fuel filter, plugs, wires, cap & rotor)

Replace the stock cat and muffler for freeier flowing ones.

A BBK throttle body did wonders for my 460

And consider a set of Headers as well

 

From what I'm told our engines don't like cold air intakes.

 

Who told you that load of BS. EVERY engine likes cool dense air

 

i put L&L headers on and deleted the air injection. i installed a set and i could tell the difference right away, even when i was running on 7 cylinders. i bent a push rod because of installtion error but when i fixed it, wow...... it pulls way better when speeding up. I bumped up the timing up to 12 degrees and i think thats what helped out a bit.

 

How do you bend a push rod buy installing headers wrong?

 

I should of mentioned I had to pull my head because of broken off exhaust studs. Then ya you can figur3 it out there

 

That would do it

 

The engine came from Ford with a standard Cold air Intake! In fact, ALL EFI engines and most carb'd engines built since the early 80's have had Cold Air Intakes from the factory!

David

 

I totally worded that wrong. I'm sorry. What I meant to say was that our trucks don't necessarily NEED aftermarket CAI. I understand that all engines prefer cold air. Cold air is more dense. I get that. It's just that the stock airbox is already efficient enough. I also am not a fan of the exposed cone filters. I personally have never run one, but I don't like the idea of exposed filters in any situation. A little heat shielding and an upgraded element, in my opinion, is all the stock airbox would need to be just as competitive as a ridiculously overpriced aftermarket unit.

 

+1 on the last two posts! The cold air inlets actually go back into the mid-1970s, I remember '73-74 LTDs having the rectangular flex hose connecting the air cleaner housing snorkel to a plastic air funnel which picked up cold air from the edge of the grille alongside of the headlights.

On my '71 LTD with the 429, I added a second snorkel to the air cleaner housing on the driver's side (along with the flex hose and air funnel), and had the vacuum door plumbed to manifold vacuum so it would only open during hard acceleration. And it all looked stock when I was done!

I laugh every time I see an underhood picture (most often on riced Hondas) with the "cold" air inlet pipe going to that cone filter underneath the hood. Nothing like sucking in hot air that just came through the radiator.

 

Thanks alot for the info. Once it's fixed up it should be pretty fun to drive.

 

I just picked up a 95 and this is my first 460. this one is obd1. did you get a CEL with the smog pump/air inj system off?

I can only see 1 o2 sensor and it is in front of the cat. is there another one? I fiure if there is not one after the cat then the smog pump etc can be safely removed?

 

No, on OBD-I vehicles, there is only upstream (of the converter) monitoring, using either one or two O2 sensors (on engines with twin converters). OBD-II is where they added the downstream O2 sensor(s) to monitor the performance of the catalytic converter(s). Be thankful that you have an OBD-I truck, it's so much simpler to work on!

I don't think you'll encounter a CEL with the smog pump removed (for off-road or testing purposes only ) as I'm pretty sure that it is not monitored by the ECM (darnit, I didn't get the emissions manual when I ordered my factory manuals off of Ebay so I can't look it up).