Crank Position Sensor?

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Why not throw an e7 302 or even a 4 banger in them...

Actually, they DID offer a 302 with E7s in 150s and light 250s - yeah it's as bad as you think it is, lol. But I really wish they had gone the 4-banger way, cause the only 4-banger capable of the job was the 4BT, and that thing with a few simple tweaks can easily keep up with the big dogs while getting at least twice their MPG. All I'm saying is the E7-headed 351 works decent for what it was intended to do - be cheap and reliable and get the job done, albeit maybe not in a big hurry. Now if it were to go in a passenger car, like for instance to compete with the LT1, yeah it probably could have used some upgrades for that job. And it probably would have got them too, and it would have made sense to do all the required R&D. But for a truck, meh, the E7s do alright. Don't misunderstand me, I do agree with you there is room for improvement, and I do wish said improvement did indeed happen. But at the same rate I can understand why it never came to be and can't hold it against Ford, especially when what they cranked out instead does in fact get the job done. Is it ideal - hell no. But it's no total gutless POS either.

Gadget, yeah that would make sense, the 302 is pretty compact and I forgot both how big the mod motor is and how crammed the Explorer engine bay was in the respective years. And idk what was wrong with that '87 351 you had to deal with, maybe the carb was all shot or the entire engine was in fairly lousy shape? But I've driven a number of 351-powered OBS trucks, all heavy 3/4-ton or larger, and never really felt the need to put the pedal to the floor to get them moving. The only one I though was noticeably underpowered was a 4-door dually, with a slushbox of course - but yeah, that one was a fleet-order vehicle, and for all I know was probably run hard and put away wet too while still in service.

[gadget73]

it wasn't real high mileage, and the carb was actually a replacement Holley 390. The original had been tuned to death by someone who had no business tinkering with it. I don't think that truck had much over 100k on it. It didn't smoke or anything, it just had no ass at all. C6 trans too, so maybe that was part of the issue. I also don't know what gears were in it, but they felt tall. I have no idea what the timing was, but its entirely likely it was screwed up. I de-smogged it to make it stop blowing fireballs out of the tailpipe. Someone had been into the vacuum plumbing horrible and everything was fucked. I couldn't figure it out, so I removed it in order to make it run good enough to be useful again. It ran smooth, it just had no gumption. Considering it rarely needed to do over 5 mph, and I could make it do anything I asked it to by leaving it in 4L, thats as far as I was motivated to go with it.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Oh yeah, good enough is good enough sometimes. Like, I'm sure I can get more oomph out of my POS, but I have exactly zero motivation to attempt it - works decent enough as is and I can't really hurt it unless I tried really hard so fawk it, got more pressing matters to attend to with that truck than dick around with the engine...

[Tiggie]

I have pretty off topic two cents to add here. My grandpa bought (and still has) an 82 and an 85 F250's. 82 is 400-2bbl 4-speed, 85 is 351W "HO" with the Holley and C6. Both are stone stock and same gears. The 400 is and always has been a complete dog compared to the 351. Night and day difference. As bad as the E7 351 were, the E5 351 and 400 are worse in stock form. Even the 460 wasn't setting the world on fire in the 80's. I blame the cams and sucky compression. Peak torque for a 79 panther with the 351 came in at 1400 Iirc (shoulda been a diesel I guess).

[pantera77]

Dodge 5.9 - 1989–1992 - 190 hp, 292 lb·ft
GM 5.7 - 1988–1993 - 210 hp, 300 lb·ft
Ford 5.8 - 1988-1991 - 210 hp, 315 lb·ft

How was the E7 headed 351 bad? Sure by today's standards it's nothing special but it was more than comparable when it was new.

[merc91]

88-91 e7 5.0- 225hp/300tq
88-91 e7 5.8- 210hp/315tq

The 5.8 "upgrade" in power over the 5.0 isn't an upgrade... Cam swap is what trades 15hp for 15ft/lbs. My point is if you're going to put out a 5.8 than put out a 5.8 is all.

[pantera77]

Yes, but now your comparing car engines to truck engines. Lay down a dyno overlay of a HO 5.0 and a truck 5.8 and no one in their right mind would pick the HO for any truck duties. A HO 5.0 sucks for towing. The cam is dead as a rock under 3k, I'd take a truck 5.0 or a box lopo over one anyday of the week for towing. And yes, I semi routinely tow 5-7k with a HO swapped wagon. There's a reason I bought a 351 F250 instead.




Don't get me wrong, I would have loved if Ford had stuck a hotter cam and gt40's on them from the factory. Or even an intake that wasn't complete shit.

Of course nowadays you can get 400+hp 1/2 tons and 3/4 tons with 800+ tq so it's all a moot point

[gadget73]

Having towed with an HO motor before, I can concur on the fact that they blow for that job. A non-HO 5.0 would be better, or one using the truck cam. Those suck at higher RPM but they make virtually the same torque, just at a much lower rpm than the HO stick does. Towing with an Explorer cam engine actually does a right fair job.

[merc91]

We're talking car HO cam vs truck cam powerband differences now. Saying an HO 5.0 sucks for towing then saying taking all those same parts except the cam and making a truck towing motor with 15hp less/15ftlbs more thanks to a cam swap is kinda my point.

Better flowing heads don't mean losing low end tq, my old gt40 explorer/mild comp dd tq minded cam dyno'd an extra 45ft/lbs on the 5.0 over the e7 5.8 and that was in full force (over 300ft/lbs) off converter loading to 5000rpm. Gt40's are decently matched 5.0 heads, skimping by and putting them on a sub 4000rpm 5.8 truck towing application would be understandable.
Any way ya slice it the e7 5.8 puts a cramp in the tear ducts.

Must be my youth having seen ford always impress in the recent years that leaves me a little perplexed with the 302 e7 heads on marketed 351 trucks I guess. Cruising on the highway at 2000rpm with some wood or a boat is 1 thing, the real world 8000lb loaded tool truck pulling in/out of 26 canadian oil well sites on steady 60mph traffic roads on the great lakes with the usual morning fog on a daily basis is another. Paying for the extra needed power and getting an extra 15ft/lbs and a motor that suffocates past 3000rpm was a rip off.

Who knew mentioning e7 heads on a 351 truck being dissapointing could actually spark a debate lol.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Cruising on the highway at 2000rpm with some wood or a boat is 1 thing, the real world 8000lb loaded tool truck pulling in/out of 26 canadian oil well sites on steady 60mph traffic roads on the great lakes with the usual morning fog on a daily basis is another. Paying for the extra needed power and getting an extra 15ft/lbs and a motor that suffocates past 3000rpm was a rip off.

Ha, 8k loaded! Bitch please, real work trucks scale at over 8k empty Joke aside, lemme throw ya a curve ball here - have you tried shifting the transmissions that typically came behind said 5.8 at over 3k RPMs? The standard gas-job ZF junk is sorta acceptable I guess cause it's wide-ratio but not too wide-ratio, but the creeper-gear 4-speeds are pretty horrible. If you can make a M5OD live in heavy use, or you swap a diesel-spec T19 in place of whatever creeper you got, those two are actually decent at high-RPM shifts, and supposedly you can monkey around and build yourself a close-ratio small-block-bell ZF that I'd imagine would do great as well. But really the factory offerings in factory form kinda sucked, so ultimately it wouldn't do you much good if the engine could pull like a freight train past 4k when by the time you grab the next gear you're back down to 2k again.

Also whether Ford impresses or not is strictly a matter of personal opinion. Mine happens to be that new Fords are overpriced pieces of junk that are better suited for Pokemon chasing than hard work year after year after year. I'll keep my old underpowered shit that I can fix and mod myself, and whenever it gets too slow for the interstates I'll just stick to the back roads - fawk this rat race most people wanna run with, unless there's cold hard cash waiting at the finish line I ain't racing no one! lol

Edit: there is still the matter of the E7 5.8 being the most powerful of the three 5.7-5.9 liter engines. So it won the war at the time, and that was good enough. Could they have made it even more powerful, sure, but it was good enough as is. OEMs tend to dislike blowing money on things that aren't really needed, and a super 5.8 at that time was one such thing.

[packman]

I should have never posted this question, or just stuck strictly to CPS.

Packman

[sly]

ahh... the theology of work truck vs hoonmobile. When working, nobody cares about horsepower. Low end torque gets things moving and it's always good to pace yourself when working. Hooning, of course, likes horsepower due to tire spinning goodness and there really is no need for low end torque as you're not trying to move thousands of extra pounds.

That said... my beater will out-pull my 93 pi swap around town without issue. My 93 will easily out-pull the beater over 40 mph. The 93 doesn't have the wide ratio gears or the low end torque like the beater does, but it's got the power in the midrange for highway driving. It would probably do better than the beater all around with the wide range gears as the beater doesn't beat out the 93 around town by much.

I would much rather have a truck for pulling stuff though. Bigger brakes and all.

[pantera77]

ust be my youth having seen ford always impress in the recent years that leaves me a little perplexed with the 302 e7 heads on marketed 351 trucks I guess. Cruising on the highway at 2000rpm with some wood or a boat is 1 thing, the real world 8000lb loaded tool truck pulling in/out of 26 canadian oil well sites on steady 60mph traffic roads on the great lakes with the usual morning fog on a daily basis is another. Paying for the extra needed power and getting an extra 15ft/lbs and a motor that suffocates past 3000rpm was a rip off.

Who knew mentioning e7 heads on a 351 truck being dissapointing could actually spark a debate lol.

Then you could of got a 7.3 or 460

The 351 was a middle of the line engine. Literally middle of the line, you had your 4.9/5.0/5.8/7.3/7.5

Right in the middle was the little old disappointing 5.8

Never mind said 5.8 out performed both GM's 5.7 and Dodge's 5.9.
Never mind the fact the 5.8 was unsurprisingly better than the 4.9 or 5.0
Never mind the fact that if you wanted more power and torque there were 2 better engines available.

Clearly in 1987 Ford should have stuck 408 strokers with AFR heads in their trucks instead.

[lincolnlarry]

All this talk about turd engines reminds me of prom 1987. My date's father had a brand new Buick Regal white with T-tops. He insisted we take it. Beautiful car with red interior. It was the slowest thing I ever drove in my entire life! Base engine V-6 put out an earth shaking 115hp. Big car with 4 people in it was bad. The dang thing took about 20sec. to get up to speed getting on the freeway. What a change since I drove a 1978 Nova with a hopped up 283 V-8 it was a little screamer.

[packman]

My friend had a 1984 Buick Regal; velour interior. Gutless performance, but perfect for dates.

And yes Panterra! I agree with you; Ford should have contacted Trick Flow in 1996 and acquired some Track Heat heads for the 5.8L That way, we wouldn't have to swap heads.