Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums

Hey all new guy here. I was told to check out this site because it specializes with my power plant. I have a 1994 2wd 5.0 Ranger. I have pulled the codes and it is from a 1986 TBird per the numbers. I have noticed that my setup has a MAF and this wasn't on the 86 cars as I can find. I am wanting to possibly rebuild it and bolt on a set of GT40 heads and intake (which valve springs should I get). I know roller is where it's at but I am perfectly happy with an old fashion flat tappet camshaft as that's what should be in it. I would like to know if you guys could take a look at these engine pics and possibly tell me what I have going on here. I want to keep the fi and I am from old carb stuff. Also does anyone make a performance chip for these engines. Lastly whats a good camshaft for the GT40 top end that will not require an aftermarket stall. Thanks in advance and I look forward to hanging out here if yall will have me.

A few more, and the injectors are orange.

That is a crownvic motor, not a tbird motor, not that there is much difference though.

You need to figure out which ecm you have, you pretty much have to have a h.o. cam and computer to run mass air, unless someone threw together stuff wrong.

Oh, and all 86 up blocks are hydraulic roller cams, no need for dinosaur cam lobes and leaded or zinced oil, valve adjustments, and all the other  that goes along with it.

Take off the cover plate to you intake. This will tell ya if its an s.o. or h.o. intake. See what your firing order is by following the spark plug wires.

1986 year motor should be a roller block already and not a hydraulic flat tappet motor.  The 84-85 TBI motors were the hydraulic flat tappet ones.  I personally would find the code for the block itself and double check to make sure that is the correct year for the block.  With an MSD box from the pictures someone could have converted the motor to roller cam on a hydraulic flat tappet block and it still work.

Im guessing that it is a 86-91 crownvic motor that someone did a h.o. and mass air upgrade to. The 86-88 cougar/tbird motors are nearly identical,but the brackets and intake look like the crown vic motor. The intake plate is off of a ford explorer 5.0, so you might already have some goodies inside of it already.

If you can, check the heads. If there's three or four bars on the corners, you have GT40 heads....4 bars would indicate GT40P heads.

The plug routing will determine if it's an HO or the standard 5.0....

The other guys are right...it's a roller block most likely...you've got the mass air covered. If you're going to upgrade it, there are a lot of choices...

Thanks all, the firing order is the non HO variant. The heads do not have any lines on the front, maybe one but they definitely aren't gt40's. I will know more when I take the intake off. It has a soft knock in it now so I need to do something quick before stuff goes bad wrong.

If it has ¾" reach spark plugs(used only in E6SE heads, HO other than '86 use ½ reach) it's a '86-91 Crown Vic, Grand Marquis or Town Car engine(Townie to '90)... Could be a T-Bird/Coug engine but reversed intake & those accessory brackets indicates full sized useage... 

Other than Calif 1991, none of these engines used MAF and there are no other MAF computers that used the std firing...  Sooo you need to check ECM as most likely it's firing the injectors in the HO pattern...

BTW to find year there will be a date code usually by casting number of block near/behind starter... Any casting number that begins with E6 is at least a '86 and is roller cammed(unless it's a truck, but still roller block)... A three or four digit code that looks like 6L10, 8J6 etc is the date the block was cast... 6 would be 1986, L November, 10 day of month... For 8J6 would be 1988, Sept, 6th day... Easy to decode, I is always skipped... 1A2 would be 1991, Jan, 2nd day, dates repeat every decade...