I have a 1989 ford f150 v8 5.0 and am craving more power but needs to be street legal and not tons of money. So what would be something that would add power.

 

Well a good tune up to start with , something you can do for free is advance the base timing a few deg from 10 to 12-14 BTDC , Next would be long tube headers & exhaust . You don't want to spend alot of money , so i would look for something like the HO cam & GT 40 heads , look on craigs list ect , you should be able to find them cheap . Rear end gears will help to ....Lew

 

What Lew said.

Also, don't waste you money on cold air intakes, chips, throttle body spacers etc.

 

ok just so im not misunder standing u here but when u say 12-14* BTDC that would be turning the distributor clock wise or counter clock wise?


and im agreeing with u on every thing else...

 

The dist turns counter clockwise , so you turn it counter clockwise , advance the timing

 

k thats what i was thinking just wanst 100% lol

 

found some good info Intro

This is an introduction to the first steps to take for increasing your 5.0L Mustang’s performance. Although this article is built around the fuel-injected 5.0 liter Mustang most of what’s here applies to other Mustangs and many other cars.

Read all you can before you dive in. If you ask 50 people their opinions on what you should do you’ll get 50 different answers! There’s lots of information on the web and in Mustang magazines. Note that these specialty performance car magazines are not only there to help you enjoy the potential of your car more, but to sell their advertisers' parts. Look at the return on your investment before buying. Lots of parts suppliers are on the Web.

If you’re like most people you’ll want to jump in first with straight-line performance enhancements. If you do then later you’ll discover the weaknesses in the other areas of your car.

Philosophy

This is a balanced approach, not just looking for the best quarter mile times, but a car that can turn and slow down too.

It won’t be necessary to rob a bank to afford these enhancements.

Want a streetable, reliable, legal car.

This isn’t meant to be all-inclusive on how to buy a particular part, or even why you should do this instead of something else. It’s just meant to give you an idea of where to start researching.

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Chassis stiffening

Philosophy

If you want to accelerate hard or corner hard the Fox bodied chassis needs to have the flex taken out. If you have a convertible you should do this now whether you make any other changes to your car or not. When you corner hard and you car’s body flexes the tire contact patches change and your alignment is thrown off.

Tightening up

Subframe connectors. This is the single best thing you can do for you chassis. Get weld-on connectors, not bolt-on.

Strut tower brace. Get a three-point that bolts to the firewall, also.

G Load or K member brace. For better turn-in.

These three together make a good basis for future modifications.

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Braking

Philosophy

Any improvement you can afford to make is good. Most Fox bodied Mustangs have inadequate brakes. They fade too quickly in performance driving and lock up prematurely.

Cheap braking improvements:

Change your brake fluid. Put in a good quality fluid.

Put on new brake lines. Stainless steel if you want, but just new rubber ones will help.

Replace the front Ford pads with something better.

Replace the front calipers.

Repack the front wheel bearings while you're in there.

Next improvements:

Upgrading the rear drums to discs. This is an expensive undertaking, but worthwhile for performance applications.

Upgrading the front brakes. If you go to the expense of putting discs in the rear think about upgrading the fronts also. About 80% of your braking is done with the fronts.

Install a brake bias valve to allow manual adjusting of the front-to-rear brake bias. Get a better master cylinder.

You can buy kits that include all the necessary parts.

Common mistake:

Running racing pads on the street. This is a quick way to ruin your expensive rotors. And racing pads don't stop very well when cold. You could be surprised some winter morning. Hard pads have to heat up before working their best, but they don't fade with repeated hard braking. Softer pads don't have to warm up much and are best for street conditions. Investigate and find the proper pads for your needs.

Not doing anything! There are lots of Mustangs running lots of HP upgrades with OEM brakes that were inadequate in a stock Mustang.

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Straight line performance

Your engine makes power by pumping air. In general, the more air you can flow through the more horsepower. At some point you may have to improve the fuel and the ignition systems.

The basic rule is cubic inches equals more HP so if your displacement stays the same as you increase HP with modifications then something has to give. Modifications to increase HP usually moves that horsepower higher up in the RPM’s and you may be robbing torque. This is OK for the drag strip, but not so good for the street or road course. You can fix this by changing you rear gears to bring that power back down to where you want it.

Philosophy

First, work on increasing the flow of your intake and exhaust before getting into the engine. That is, look at the air intake, fuel intake and exhaust before worrying about cams and new cylinder heads. I don’t cover superchargers or nitrous because they can cause lots of stress on an engine if not done correctly. There’s careful investigation you need to do if you’re interested in one of these options.

More is not always better. Increasing one part too much will create a bottleneck elsewhere that can actually bog you down. Think of your engine as a complete system.

Once you go over about 300 HP you need to upgrade your fuel delivery and spark. Also, over 300 HP is where you’ll find other weak links like your tranny, driveshaft and rear-end so this is where it starts getting expensive as the stress levels on your engine increase.

Cheap horsepower gains:

Tune up – good quality plugs, wires, cap, rotor

Clean injectors

Remove air silencer -- it's under the air box in the wheel-well

K&N air filter

Advance timing – experiment to see how high you can advance it and not have pinging.

Synthetic fluids. Not a lot of HP gains, but definitely a good idea for you performance car’s longevity. Change the motor oil, tranny and rear end to synthetics.

Underdrive pulleys. Slows down your accessories, your alternator and A/C, that rob power. Warning: This may slow down your alternator enough to where it discharges at idle.

Next improvements:

Lower (numerically higher) rear gear. 3.55 or 3.73’s are good all around gears.

Exhaust headers.

Tuned cat-back exhaust. Just mufflers don’t make much difference in HP.

H pipe and high flow cats. Your state’s emissions laws determine what you can do.

More improvements:

Intake manifold, Extrude Honed or new, and a bigger throttle body. Stock TB is 60mm. Go to 65 for lightly modified cars. Then new cylinder heads.

Convert the Speed Density air intake to mass air metering. 1989-up ('88 for Calif. Mustangs) came with MAF. This probably only needs to be done for more highly modified cars, especially when increasing the air flow with a better intake, heads or cam. Even then, in many cases, Speed Density can work OK if you have a custom computer chip made for your modifications, but then if you change your car you may need to re-program the chip.

Common mistakes:

Too big of anything. Too big of a throttle body or carburetor, too large diameter of headers, etc.

Ram air using hot under the hood air – cold air is denser therefore better. Draw the air from outside. Warning: Drawing air from under the car is a good way to suck up water, road kill, etc.

Using more octane than you need can actually rob power and will at least waste money.

Colder plugs – Maybe for the race track only

Putting a lot of money into fuel flow (fuel pump, injectors) and after-market ignition on a nearly stock engine.

Computer Chips - Putting a chip on a stock or nearly stock engine is a waste of money. You can advance your timing yourself! Once you go into fairly heavy modifications then it's time to think about having a custom chip made to fit your particular engine, especially if you're experiencing drivability problems. Don't bother with an off-the-shelf chip on a stock engine -- put the money into something better.

So how much horsepower do you gain?

Part vendors make unsubstantiated claims. Other improvements move the horsepower way up in the rpm's so the car may actually feel slower around town. And since your engine is a system you may not realize the full potential of a particular upgrade until you do something else. All that said, here's a shot at estimates of horsepower increases for some popular modifications:

* Underdrive pulleys -- 5 to 10 hp
* Cat-back exhaust -- 10 hp
* Headers -- 10 hp
* H-pipe -- 5 hp
* K&N-type air filter and remove air silencer-- 5 hp
* Throttle body -- 5 to 10 hp
* Intake manifold -- 15 hp
* Don't forget about gears. No HP increase, of course, but the most performance bang-for-the-buck.

 

The underdrive pulleys are a good mod , they will pick up some HP , and easy to do ...

 

Uhhhhh pretty sure you turn the distributor clockwise to advance timing.

 

..... >.> at least some one was paying attention.... i thaught about that after i posed my last one.... trying retard my engine lol

i thinks its plenty tarded right now..... but im pritty sure i woulda realized it when i put the timing light on it and seen it go from 10* to 8* ever slowly closer to TDC.....

 

Yeah my mistake , it is clockwise , you got me going in circles now ....Lew

 

Yeah I had to sit and think about it for a minute.So yeah I guess all this time you thought you were advanced and you actually retarted it.My truck from the factory was never timed correctly it was actually set at 4degrees TDC from Ford so I advanced it to 10 degrees TDC and what a world of difference in throttle response.

 

Ah mistakes happen,you had me going in circles for a minute as well.I was thinking you were right for a minute.So I had to go digging through my archives for a minute to see.

 

that would be true if these ran pontiac engines lol

 

Yeah when i set the timing i just grab the dist & turn it & watch the timing marks , I dont sit there & think of rotation . Had alot of chevys , mopars & pontiacs & now fords....