Hello everyone.
I have a '96 F-250 with the 4.9. I am wondering about cheap (and reasonable) performance enhancers to improve gas mileage and power. Have thought about air intake, throttle bottle spacer, exhaust. Any good suppliers for these and/or advice? What about D.I.Y. stuff? It would be awesome if I could improve those aspects for free!
Any advice is very welcome, but remember I want to keep it cheap and reasonable (no nitrous, super/turbochargers, nothing crazy).
Thanks!

 

For the EFI engine, not much. Sit back and do a lot of reading on this Forum as the subject has been covered many times.

 

Better muffler and clean up or swap to a free flowing intake & air filter.

With an efi motor, you are looking at major external surgery to convert to 4bbl & headers, and you will end up with a power figure not much better than stock.

Then there is the cam--internal surgery, and you end up with the power band moved up the rpm scale. Similar torque, higher revs, more hp, but perhaps softer off idle--not a great gain.

Maybe headers on an efi motor would be worth it, but try the cheap stuff first, and yes, read through the threads for more.

 

About the only thing you can do to it is put a straight through muffler on it and run the tail pipe all the way out back. This won't gain you much of performance or mileage - or exhaust noise.

Gearing is the biggest thing. If you do a lot of highway driving, 2.75 or 3.08 gear ratio would merrit you the best highway power and mileage.

 

Gearing makes a lot of sense, especially if there is not a lot I can do with the motor. I was already thinking about putting a locker in it anyways...these appalachian roads of southeastern ohio can be terrible with a 2wd and no weight in the bed. I know this is the incorrect forum, but how do I determine the rear axle/stock gears that I have? I have seen the tag on the diff but it is all numbers and no specific listing of type of diff. I am thinking it is the 10 1/4 ('94 f-250 2wd). Thanks for the input!!!

 

Go ahead and post the numbers off the diff tag, we have decoder rings.....

 

Yours is an F250? Look for the numbers 4 10 on your axle tag. I'm betting that is what you have. By the way, a locker will make it harder to manuver on icey roads. If you are determined to run a locker, don't just buy the cheapest thing you can. This is something you don't want to explode. I run a Powertrax No Slip Automatic Locker with 31'' tires. No problems as of yet. My dad runs it in his 350 HP Elky. No problems. It's also as "cheap" as a limited slip. Just something to keep in mind though.. If you get a flat tire and change it with a smaller tire in the rear, this can explode your diff. Make sure to keep a spare tire the same size as the tires on the locked axle.

A 300 with 3.08 gear ratio is a good combo. A lot of guys will disagree, but this is what my truck came with. With wider than OE tires I still had plenty of get up and go - and my high way power was very good.

By the way, what is your RPM's going 60? What size tires do you have? Tell me in inches, I don't know numbers. If you mentioned this I missed it. If you are running 31'' tires and your rpm is at 2,000 or so, then you have 4.10 gears.