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i just bought a 93 f150 XLT 5L and was wondering easy and quick was to build more power without upsetting the ecu... i've bought a set of flowtech shorty headers and plan to buy a couple K&N cone filters to stick in a cowl and a little bit of ignition work such as a accel super coil, msd street fire cap and rotor, and taylor 8mm plug wires and some descent spark plugs... i am contimplating in getting the ecu tuned for better power and fuel economy. and because of the exhaust work i am going true duel and getting rid of the cats and air pump. was wondering if there is any quick and easy ways ( as well as cheap ) to build an extra ten horses here or there..??. i really am not happy with its stock output at 185hp.... Thnx
lol best $600 bucks i ever spent (this is the before pic)
Taking off the air pump won't help but hurt. Removing cats are also going to screw with the ECU.
Buy a 347 crate motor. What your planing won't give you much if anything for your money.
How can removing the cat "mess" with the ecu kermmy? The only sensor in the exhaust is an O2 sensor upstream of the cat. There is a viable debate about how much power gain there is from removing the cat on a stock engine, but there is no loss other than emissions legality.
The ECU won't notice the cat being gone on that truck. I've read on here that removing the air pump can damage the older cats because they're made to have a supply of fresh air from the pump and running them without that can cause them to clog up. If that's the case and you want to keep cats and lose the pump and the mess of plumbing that goes with it, you can just replace the cats with hi-flow units.
Also you can do a "Sixlitre tuneup"... part of which involves a timing bump. That'll get you a couple more ponies. Search on here for it.
The route to more power with these engines is with a complete exhaust makeover including headers and then a cam swap... everything else is pretty much just polishing the turd. No computer mods needed with this either as long as the cam selected is computer(EFI) friendly, but if you don't want to go quite that far into the motor add 1.7 roller rockers instead. This won't produce the gains a cam will but it will be enough to notice.
