I recently purchased this 1997 F350 with the 460 and ZF five speed with 75,000 miles for $2500. It needs a new head gasket as it is blowing plumes of fluffy white coolant clouds out of the exhaust and the oil looks like creamy coffee

That being said, I am interested in making some performance upgrades while i have the engine apart. Increasing the compression ratio to around 9.5:1, installing an upgraded cam, possibly some performance heads or having the factory heads worked.

After doing a ton of reading about this generation engine I have decided the SD efi has to go. It will not work well with what I intend on doing to the engine and does not provide much flexibility with future upgrades.

I am debating on whether I should convert to a ford MAF sequential efi setup or buy heads and intake to use a throttle body self-learning efi system such as the holley sniper. The former is the cheapest and most factory looking way to go but gives me no options for aftermarket heads or intake and i am stuck with an ugly engine bay. The latter would allow me to use edlebrock heads and intake, remove all of the emissions garbage, and make the engine look very nice.

My concern with using a standalone efi system is whether or not i will be able to retain the use of the factory gauges. From what i've read the gauges are not controlled by the ecm. Does anyone have any experience to confirm or deny this?

My end goal is goal is to have between 350-450hp and keep the engine a low end cruiser/hauler/daily driver

 

You could retain the stock ecm to run the speedo only since you have a manual trans. I don't believe there was ever a factory MAF 460, maybe only in California?

I'll caution you that self learning efi is not. A more accurate statement would be it is more tunable and adaptable than a stock system. They still require tuning so if you would have to pay someone else factor that in.

Me personally? I would keep the mods SD friendly and stock tune or go with mega or microsquirt and pay someone to tune it.

 

Yes in California the 460's we MAF from the factory. Parts for them are hard to come by in New Jersey. Can you please explain how exactly the "Self-learning" EFI systems work if they do not actually fine tune themselves while driving?

 

They make a fuel/load map based on your engine settings. They can make corrections to fueling from feedback from the oxygen sensor up to a point but there are limits. Acceleration events (think carb pump shot) do not tune themselves and that is on you. Also startup conditions do not "self tune. Here what I'm saying: you or someone else will spend a lot of time tuning, probably more than you would a carb as there are more things to tune.

It all depends on use but if it is a hotrod or toy vehicle it is a waste of money. I went with fitech on my '77; my 69 build will get a carb

 

We offer a plug and play tuning solution for your application that has self learning capability and is also cheaper than the Sniper (or any other self-learning ECU) while also plugging right in to your stock harness and mounting in the stock ECU hanger. It has a TON of built in features and works with all mods. We've made north of 4.5hp/ci so it's certainly capable of just about anything.

All of the stock gauges will still work.

It allows you to delete all of the extra "stuff" you were wanting to remove to clean up the engine bay, allows you to run whatever engine mods you want, etc.

It comes with a base tune to get you started up and offers unparalleled free tuning support via our support forum where you can share your tune and datalogs and we can assist you with any tuning issue or questions you have along the way.

For those with E4OD's and 4R70W's, we've got one that has built-in transmission control/tuning as well.

Click on our signature and it will take you to the page where the PiMPx (batch fire EFI), PiMPxs (sequential EFI), and PiMPxshift (sequential or batch fire w/trans control) are listed along with all of their features, pricing, etc. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.

 

Thank you for the information, I recently saw your product in use on an episode of hotrod garage on a 4 cyl turbo Thunderbird. It looks like a quality setup. Can you speak to the advantages of switching to a coil near plug setup and turning the distributor into a crank angle sensor?

Also I see you have transcontrol provisions for the E4OD and 4R70W, do you plan on creating a control system for the 6R80 family of transmissions? I am looking to swap one into my truck along with the efi and engine upgrades.