Well, after putting up with all the chugging, coughing, surging, bucking and such for 6+ yrs I've had my '89 F150 I got it all fixed up this past weekend.

Yup, ripped all the fuel injection off and installed an 1850 Holley.

Went pretty smooth overall. Within 2 hours I stripped it apart and had new manifold installed. Went to lunch(and parts run) and had it running by 6pm.

Holley Street Dominator manifold(dual plane)..........bought it back in the 80's.
1850 Holley (600 cfm)..............had it on the shelf
New duraspark distributor and box $70.
Big purchase was the Aeromotive regulator that cuts the stock FI pump down to 6psi. $135.

Buddy had wiring harness from 80's mustang that I borrowed all the duraspark plug ends from so I could make my own harness.


Worse part: the "new" distributor was a POS, the advance plate was bound up and it ran like crap til I pulled it apart and got everything put in the right way. Now it works fine.

The regulator doesn't really like to get it all the way down to 6psi(though it is rated to 3 psi). Hovers 7.5+ psi. Hasn't created any problems, but I might look in replacing the pump with something smaller. Being winter and my daily driver I figured I would try to run the stock stuff. It is okay, but in the long run I think I will change it come warm weather.

I haven't got the choke hooked up yet. With a couple pumps of fuel it fires easily and idles fine after about 5 seconds of running even at 20* weather. Not sure I will worry about hooking it up now.

Still have a few tweaks I want to tinker with, but sure is nice to have a SMOOTH running engine. I even tried my remote start last night. Truck had run for a few minutes already so it fired right up. I'm sure it won't work on a dead cold engine after sitting out all night.

Can't say I won't miss the carefree-ness of fuel injection but the lack of QUALITY repair parts made it necessary for me to replace it with something I could make run nice. Sadly even that new distributor was a POS. I'm thinking I'll come up with an original 70's version that will be better built.

 

Proform and possibly others make HEI distributors for Ford 302's and 351's. I ran one on my last truck (which I converted to carb) for years with no issues. The Proform units just need one power supply wire and you are in business, and are ready to wire up a tach. The only problem I had was that the distributor was large enough that I had to get a smaller diameter air cleaner.

 

Congrats on giving up on the EFI I guess?

There's not a single EFI component in these trucks that costs more than the $205 you spent on that distributor and fuel pressure regulator.

 

Never happen. Never put a Chevy distributor in my Fords. I was going to just put a single point distributor in it, but my buddies were giving me grief about it.


I got tired of putting new Chinese junk or "reman" parts on it and not making any change for the better(I have an alphabet soup list of "sensors" that I replaced). I'm just done with the antiquated speed density crap. So many guys change them over to Mass Air, but I didn't want to get into all that. I had a weekend to change it, not weeks. One power wire to the duraspark and it runs. Of course, like I mentioned, the "new" distributor was a POS also. Should have done some digging and found a junkyard 70's model. At least I know it was made to FOMOCO specifications.

 

If you delete the high pressure pump on the frame rail, it may help with the pressure regulation.

 

That is my plan in the future. I wanted to try to keep it all working and Aeromotive said it would work. They make this regulator just for this kind of conversion.

My problem is the small pumps typically don't have a long life. The original pump is 25 yrs old. Doubt one of these little diaphram pumps will make it that long. Don't expect to keep the truck that long, but I try to design things to last.

Some 25 yrs ago I had a Carter electric pump on my '70 F100 and it left me stranded in the middle of nowhere one day. Ugh. Don't want that to happen twice.

 

This conversion is sounding better and better.