My twin brother and i have been working on our 1985 4x4 f150 with a 300 in it since last winter (long time due to lack of money) and after all thsi time it is still not working well. Until 2 weeks ago we were jsut planning on doing stuff to make the motor run well stock. Well we painted the frame put a nice exhaust on the stock manifold rebuilt the carb and plugged some vacuum lines. Fixed a leak in the gas tank, did the timing adjusted the carburator. O and replaced the ball joints and power steering bocame broken).

Well it still doesn't run well. It will run well for aday and then we goto drive it the next and guess what everytime you push in the cutch it dies so we finally got fed up and decided to do some mild perofrmace upgrades. First i want to here what you think we should do for upgrades and then i want to knwo if what we came up with will be good.

we plan to replace the intake manifold and carb first. We found a good deal on a clifford manifold for 170 shipped and a holley 390cfm for 130 in decent condition. our other options were offy intake and 2150 carburator.

then we were going to replace the exhaust manifold with either headers or the dual outlet ehaust manifold form the efis. we looked at pacesetters which i couldn't figure out whether fit the 4x4 or not. We also looked at hedmanns and cliffords but really the optioons are limited if you know of others or a better deal that'd be great. the only difference i could figure out would be the outlets ont he clifford were 2.25 and the others were 2.5. The exhaust thaat we put on has a flowmaster on it with no cat and ends in front of the rear wheel - my friend said this might be one of the probs, not enough back pressure

then we were thinking about a cam just a mild one but we have had a hell of a time finding one, the only one i could find was on the clifford website.

the last tihing we are planing on doing is replacing the radiator with a larger one and then putting an electric fan in. I dont knwo much about these, i can only find cheap ones like 100 or like 700 ones and we are just planning on gettng the radiator at a swap meet if you know how to get one cheaper speak up.

any other suggestions ideas anything woudl be aprrieciated.

JP
ps my brother posts under this name as well

 

I'd like to know more about the electric fan idea, too. I've been thinking about putting one in my truck, but I honestly have no idea even where to start. The price ranges are incredible. I don't know what's a good fan or a bad one, or even if it will fit!

 

Locally new rads go for about 150 to 200 bucks. You can check with salvage yards or craigslist and you might get lucky. If your engine is dying when engaging the clutch it has nothing to do with exhaust. Get a haynes manual and check the trouble shooting section before throwing more parts at it.
In the future I will be adding an electric fan to my rig. I have done this to other vehicles using junkyard parts. Do a search there are write ups about using Taurus fans. One truck I just added a fan to increase cooling while hauling a travel trailer and another vehicle I replaced the fixed fan with an electric for performance. Both worked great.
There are many after market options also and they tend to be easier.
Note: when mountng the fan use a bracket to mount the fan to something solid and not through the rad core. The easiest is mounting the fan on the grille side and pushing the air through.
regards
rikard

 

Ya I agree about fixing your current problems first. It would be pretty aggrivating to put on the new manifold and carb only to find out you have a burned pistion or low compression or what ever ya know? As far as the electric fans go i would check out LMC, last time i looked thru my catalog for these trucks they had several electric fan options listed that I believe started at around 100 bucks or a hair over, but dont quote me on that. They even offer thermostats to turn them on automaticaly at whatever temp you want.

 

the thing is we have been trying to fix the problem, we have had like six people help us out. we even sent it to the shop and no one coudl do more than tell us it had the symptoms of an vacuum line leak and just carb probs, everyone tells me the carter 1bbl and the egr on it always die, true?

 

The "not enough back pressure" thing is a myth. If you are on a budget use the EFI exhaust manifolds and you can single or dual out as you please. Acquire a cheap vacuum guage as your tool box is empty without one...20 hg of vacuum would be excellent. 17 hg acceptable.
Comp, Crane, Reed, Schneider, Isky all make cams for this engine.
Do a bunch of reading on this Forum and here: http://fordsix.com/forum/viewforum.p...6f79c0d6a8515a for ideas on upgrades.

 

I would go with the Offy & Motorcraft 2150 2-bbl. Much easier to tune and will run on a stock engine with a reduction in jet sizes. Lokk at #48 or 49 jets with a stock cam.

EFI's work well too - look at my gallery for 2150 & efi pictures.

 

Have you tried plugging a vacuum gauge on the engine? That can tell you a lot about what's happening and get you pointed in the right direction.