I was wondering what I could do to get more horsepower/torque out of my 96 F 350 351W with out having to spend much money.

 

Best bang for your buck would be longtube headers and 1.7 rockers, after that it gets expensive because your choices are..

A) A complete HCI combo and matching fuel system upgrades.
b) A supercharger and matching fuel and spark upgrades.

 

If you do a search in this forum you will find many discussions of modifying the 5.8L. You should be able to the info you seek on this subject. If after reading all the hits you should get then come back here and ask specific questions.

 

Around how much do long tube headers and 1.7 rockers cost

 

Headers will cost $300 but you will need some custom pipes behind them.. nobody makes a bolt-on mid pipe for these trucks for longtubes, but that is something a muffler shop can do. Rockers go for $200 to $300, you will need an upper intake gasket as well but this is a direct bolt-on with no special tools. Another thing that is worth the effort is something called the 6liter tunup, it's just a common high output ignition upgrade(coil, wires, plugs gaped a little wider) with a timing bumed from 10 to 12 or 14 degrees. All alone neither of these changes produces big results but all combined will produce nice gains.

 

He can also swap on a set of GT40 heads to gain some more power. The exhaust is the easy part. I did all this on my 96 E150 van's 351W, GT40 heads, Cobra roller rockers, went with PaceSetter Shortys, built a complete new 3" single exhaust with a high flow cat and a Dynomax Super Turbo truck muffler. Next on my list is to bump the cam timing 4* to move the powerband back down to gain some bottomend torque. Next thing up is building a 393 stroker shortblock to give it more torque, but I'm going to wait till after bumping the cam timing first to see if I'm happy with the outcome. Your truck should have a dual pipe coming off the engine, with the room under it, fab'ing a full dual system should be easy to do.

 

Ok thanks I'll look into getting some parts