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One thing that hasn't been discussed yet is the intake and the firing order.
What intake should I use?
A buddy gave me a HO cobra intake a little while back. But isn't that pretty close to the same as the explorer intake?
Is any of that compatible with the 1986 computer/ fuel injection system?
The recommended COMP cam looks great on specs, but uses the HO firing order. How do I make the fuel injectors follow that order? Just switch wires to match?
If you are using the original truck fuel injection system, it's a batch fire system so it doesn't matter on the firing order for the injectors. All you have to do is move the sparkplug wires around if you are going from the 302 firing order to the 302 HO or 351w firing order.
I would re-use everything from the 86, including the intake, so everything will fit back up.
Batch fire? Hmmm. I had to read about that. I was under the assumption that it was direct injection and firing order mattered. Guess that's more of my diesel experience bleeding in.
Ford used both sequential injection which does fire each injector in the correct order, and they used batch fire, which fires all the injectors together. With batch fire the injectors inject half the fuel needed the first go round, and then the other half the second go round. If the cylinder is not ready for the fuel it just sits behind the intake valve and then when the second round injects the intake will open and suck it all in.
You can tell if it's batch fire, because the injectors will all be fed by the same color wire. They are all fed by the same 12v power wire, but the sequential systems have a different color ground for each injector that goes back to the computer. The batch fire will have the same color grounds on the injectors. I think on the v8's they may split it in two with two driver's in the computer. So you may have two different colored grounds for the 8 injectors.
Here's the diagram for the 86 fuel injection below. My description above was sort of right, kind of wrong too. You can see the injectors do have different colored ground wires, but they do go back to one splice per 4 injectors. Only two wires from the computer driving all 8 injectors.
I just went and saw the '96 Explorer being parted out. It shows 128k miles on the Odometer. The engine started right up and ran, has GT40 heads. So I made a deal to buy it.
Well here it is, assembled long block.
Now I just have to work on when I can swap it into the Bronco.
I suspect I'll have the old engine out and this one in its place in a matter of a few hours, but then it's going to be the little things that take awhile to adapt.
