I have a 1982 f150 that had a carberated 302 in it, the motor was junk so im looking for a new one. Since the truck is set up for a carberated engine how hard would it be to take a 1990 E.F.I. 302 and turn in into a carbed 302. Im not trying to spend a lot of money on this or make it a project.
Also what parts would I need to get to do the conversion, I still have all of the parts from the carbrated 302 engine. It spun a main bearing so everything else is still in good working order.

 

All you need to do is bolt the carb intake to the FI motor. And if the EFI motor has a roller cam, you'll need to use a steel geared distributor to match the roller cam. The only application for such (Duraspark) was the 1985 302 HO with a manual transmission, new reman distributors for this application can be bought at any parts house for about $60. If you want to retain the mechanical fuel pump (I wouldn't) you'll need to swap the timing cover from the 1982 motor to the 1990 block along with the fuel pump eccentric on the front of the camshaft. The 1990 motor, depending on what vehicle it came from may also have a reverse rotation timing cover(and waterpump) anyway that would need to be swapped.

 

Yeah this is pretty straight forward, strip the EFI motor to the bare longblock and put the carb intake and frontend on it, and if this was a truck motor(flat tappet) then your distributor will plug right in too without issue.

 

The vehicle the motor is comeing out of is a 1990 ford f150 2wd
Im a little bit confused about the roller cam tho, can you explain that in more detail for me please. Thanks

 

The roller cam motor used a steel cam gear and you cannot use a steel cam gear with a flat tappet cam. I believe the '90 motor is cast iron, since most truck 302's up until about '91 used flat tappet.

I rebuilt a '90 302 that was flat tappet, whereas my '92 (production date 11/91) 302 motor was a roller block.

Someone else can chime in if they know the specific time the truck 302's went to roller cam's. Repuatation points to baddad and conanski for the the specifics they mentioned in the earlier posts.

 

Already got this covered.

 

A roller cam will have a thin metal "spyder" holding down the roller lifter "dogbones" that keep the roller lifters aligned with the cam lobes. If none of these parts are present, then you've got a flat tappet cam. Being a 90 model pickup motor, it should have a flat tappet cam (but in a roller cam block) Roller lifters have a roller on the bottomside of the lifter that rides on the cam lobe, flat tappet cams have somewhat "flat faced" lifter bottoms that ride directly on the cam lobe. Roller cams are made of steel, flat tappet cams are made of cast iron. The distributor gear must match the cam material, otherwise the softer of the two gears will wear prematurely (cast iron is somewhat softer than steel)