Hey guys, so the motor in my 96 f150 is in need of a replacement. Its leaking everything and has low compression on at least half the cylinders. I have an 86 f150 that I plan to use the motor out of. It is a 302 just like my 96. It is fuel injected and as far as I can tell all of my accessories will mount to the front of it. One major question I have though is about the firing order. From what I have read the two motors have a different firing order. My concern here is that the computer in my truck will fire the injectors at the wrong time. Is there some way around this issue? From what I can tell this would be my only problem with using this motor. Is there anything else I should know before I dive into this?

 

The 86 motor is probably a flat tappet cam whereas your 96 block is a roller cam. Honestly It is a down grade. I would rebuild the motor you have before considering that swap. Either that or find a newer engine is good shape.

 

I put a '91 302 in my son's '95 F150 and I did have to reorder the firing order to the old 302 order but did not have to re-wire the injectors as they are bank-fire.

 

The OP's truck will be OBD-II with Sequential Fuel Injection. In order to use the older engine they would need to rewire the injector firing order and plug wires accordingly or install a later version camshaft with the proper firing order.

I agree using the 1986 engine is a downgrade.

 

Agreed, the '86 motor is not directly compatible, you want a '94+ 5.0.

 

Everything everyone has said is true. A buddy of mine has a 1986 F150 that originally came with an EFI 302, and we put a 351 out of a 1995 F150 in it and it was a wiring disaster, took us forever to get it all sorted. Get a 1994+ 302 or rebuild yours.

 

You probably used the '95 engine harness correct? If so that is something that should always be avoided because Ford is notorious for changing wiring.

 

No, its mostly the '86 harness but we ended up using parts of both harnesses. It was a lot of soldering and re-pinning connectors. It looks nice and neat now, but it was a real pain in the *** to do.

 

Had to deal with the wiring differences related to the distributor and TFI module correct?

 

He wanted everything including CEL and all the sensors and smog equipment to work, which made it a lot harder. The '86 harness doesn't unplug at the firewall like the 95 harness did, and the 86 harness doesn't separate into an engine harness and chassis harness like the 95 did. Figuring out the TFI module wasn't hard and the distributor was only slightly different, it wasn't a difficult workaround. Because he wanted to retain the smog equipment, I had to find a way to integrate the TAB and TAD solenoids and the 95 used a completely different EGR valve, which required a different EGR vacuum solenoid, and then I had to find a way to integrate those components into the '86 harness. Then once all that was done, I had to get the 1986 gauge cluster to function with the 1995 ECM so that the CEL would work and all the gauges would register. I basically had to gut it and wire it from scratch. Then I had issues where I was getting power to the engine, but I wasn't getting any lights, horn or other chassis electrical components. Also the fuel system from the 1995 truck had to be swapped onto the '86 truck, which was pretty straight forward, but still has an extra step that was a pain in the ***.

It wasn't my project, and I'd have never chosen to do it that way. I'm just glad it's over with.
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