im looking at upgrading the computer in my 86 f150 5.0 but cant seem to find anything out there besides "jet" wich is only WOT and venon 400 wich is pointless when i kan get the same results by pressing the pedal harder.

Im looking at summing to help me with the low to mid range. thanks everyone

 

One these older trucks the chips are not really buying you much, you don't have an electronic tranny so you can't change shift points, and there's not much it can do to the motor but advance the timing and you can do that yourself with a timing light. The route to more power and better performance with these trucks is very basic, increase the amount of air it moves and it'll make more power. There is no easy way to do this however that doesn't involve getting your hands dirty. Start with a complete exhaust and upgrade the cam and you'll have a lot more power than stock. Upgrade the computer to a mass air version and you'll see slightly improved performance and milage, but this also opens the door to the real powerful tuners like the Tweecer and EEC-Analyzer, with these the sky is the limit.

 

A good tuner doing custom programming with EEV-IV knowledge can get you better results than the off the shelf chips, but its still very limited compared to the newer trucks (which have hundreds of additional parameters in the PCM not available in older PCMs). Air/fuel ratios can be adjusted and made more optimal for power as well as adjusting the entire timing curve (not just bumping it up a fixed number of degrees across the band).... but to do that properly and optimally requires dyno tuning and its probably more than you'd want to spend on it. Frankly, its also difficult to find anyone who does much custom tuning for your era truck - most shops have moved on to handling late model CAN bus and previous model EEC-V because they offer a lot more tuning flexibility.

The cam change is a great suggestion, it'll move the power curve to where you want it for performance, verses the "consumer oriented" characteristics of the stock cam. Also, along with the exhaust hi-flow catalytic converters are an option but not cheap. Open up the intake as well with something a little better breathing though the aftermarket opens for that era are somewhat limited.

You didn't mention what the differential gear ratio is. Depending on what you have now changing out gears can move the performance curve down low.

 

What do you mean by opening up the intake? I have 3.55 gears.

 

CAI systems and larger throttle bodies are very popular for these trucks because they are easy to install and relatively cheap, but these items are generally a big waste of money as the intake system is capable of supporting a lot more airflow than the stock motor can produce. The 5.0 I just put in my truck is generating about 280hp and it's doing that through the stock intake, throttle body and airbox. The motor is stock except for the cam, and it has a very high capacity exhaust system with no factory original parts. The EFI system controlling this is the SEFI mustang setup but the stock truck system is capable of producing similar results with the same parts.

 

So your saying that by puttin in a different cam and porting the exaust on the heads, port matching my stock intake to the heads along with a dual exhaust system with no stock parts will be more than suffecient for the stock intake? I would still like to add a 1" spacer to the intake tho.

 

Yes... and the cam is the key, without it all the other mods will make very little difference.