I want to drop a 302 into my ranger. I have gotten many opinions but don't know which route would be best. now I am asking for opinions on the forum. I was told to either do a C4 or a T5 tranny and a ford 9 inch and 8.8 inch (3.73 gear ratio), was told I'd get the best of both worlds power and efficiency.
You could do a whole lot worse than a '96/'97 Explorer 5.0/4R70W/posi 8.8 w/3.73. About the best hardware Ford ever built around the Windsor.
Space under the hood goes away pretty quick with a V8 and the Expo package is very compact.
I ditched the 3.73’s in favor of 3.27's to help keep traction under control and even then in the rain, the 5.0 needs a really light touch on the throttle.
I'd avoid the C4 and go with an overdrive trans if efficiency is desired. So too I'd go with the Expo EEC-V fuel injection. Yea, the intake manifiold is kinda big but for efficiency the sequential injection and coil pack ignition is hard to beat.
You could do a whole lot worse than a '96/'97 Explorer 5.0/4R70W/posi 8.8 w/3.73. About the best hardware Ford ever built around the Windsor.
Space under the hood goes away pretty quick with a V8 and the Expo package is very compact.
I ditched the 3.73’s in favor of 3.27's to help keep traction under control and even then in the rain, the 5.0 needs a really light touch on the throttle.
I'd avoid the C4 and go with an overdrive trans if efficiency is desired. So too I'd go with the Expo EEC-V fuel injection. Yea, the intake manifiold is kinda big but for efficiency the sequential injection and coil pack ignition is hard to beat.
It's easy to get the EVTM's for both the earlier Rangers and the Explorers but the wiring to put a '96/97 Expo V8 into your '92 Ranger won't be plug and play.
The Expo's main engine to body connection is a 42 pin plug that uses all but a half dozen or so of the pins. But, don't let that scare you off. Everything from the back up lights, neutral safety switch, all the dash instruments to the fuel pump relay go through there. To get the ECU to fire up the engine only really takes a handful of power and grounds, the rest is all contained within the harness.
The difficulty comes from Ford changing the ECU locations. Pretty sure your '92 has the ECU under the dash on the right side. Starting about '93 or 4, the ECU moved to under the hood in a weather tight pocket right above the engine. Might be possible to graft one of those pockets into your Ranger or you'd need to significantly stretch the harness to move the ECU into the cabin. Neither is particularly difficult but especially adding a couple feet to the harness would be tedious.
I'd lay odds that most of the early Ranger V8 conversions use carb'd engines. Greatly simplifies the install, but dang, the later Ford EEC-V engine management system and coil pack ignition is SO much more efficient, particularly with the later overdrive transmissions they came with. (Mo betta stuff!)
I don't think trying to re-work the '92 Ranger ECU harness to run a later EFI and trans would be practical -- won't say it's impossible but woof, the amount of wiring research and effort would be enormous and I'm positive you'd have to add a significant number of wires to allow for the additional cylinders and the transmission.
In many ways, coil packs are easier to deal with than any of the distributor systems. They rely on a fixed crankshaft position sensor and the engine ECU. No moving parts, no setting timing, nada. Because each coil in the pack only fires 2 plugs, there's a lot more time for the coil to charge before triggering, gives a significantly hotter spark, particularly at higher RPM's.
