In your instance I would just go with specs of the engine that would work with a stock computer thats has the best tune and be more practical if you dont want to spend atleast another grand getting the car up to par with the setup being out of the norm.
What I can never understand is why they would put aluminum heads on an engine under 10:1 compression or supercharged is beyond me as Aluminum pulls heat away from the combustion chamber which reduces a complete burn..Think why they call Explorers -Exploders...Its not just the transmission....LOL
Just taking your stock setup and adding an adjustable valvetrain with 1.8 ratio rocker arms and angle milling the intake and stock heads to bump up compression above 9.5:1 and increase powrer 2 fold plus you can make some sick power with the same camshaft and ported stock intake...
Back in the days they would take a stock 5.0 and put stock style 1.7 ratio rocker arms , MAC Tune Shorty hedders w/ a Catback exhaust,better flow intake with a lil portwork plus an octane rod installed inside the distributor and 255lph fuelpump and made some pretty sweet streetable power that can be dialed in with a handheld tuner and yielded the same power youre gonna make with the setup you have thats gonna cost you more money than youre looking to spend to get it running right...
That is Unless you know someone with a Star tool with re-Flash cable adapter that can change the parameters in the ECU with a special chip inserted into that tool...The myth to the heavy doses of UV light needed to erase and reprogram an internal ECU chip are just that...Myths.....LOL
Theres also techs that offer ECU reflashing and they even come to your home ....The cool ones can reprogram too if you have the data for the changes.............
Word through the grapevine told me recently that Moates has stopped making/selling and servicing tuning chips as they are retiring so the only option is the adapter board and a Megasquirt system.
Id never go Terminator X...The system is pretty bogus for anything but a racecar that blazes the track in short intervals.
The system is not smart and goes by the parameters of the sensors and for the money arent very accurate...They should be like 1/3 the price.
My expensive $125.00 Holley sensor for the fuel Pressure and the $125.00 sensor for the oil pressure were off by 12lbs on one sensor and 9 lbs on the other and I know theres a way to offset the difference but two weeks later when the weather temps dropped by over 10 degrees the sensors needed to be recalibrated once again so I went with cheap chinese sensors and they worked way better ..
And if you dont go with a TFI distributor and go with a magnetic pickup type or dual sync or hyperspark distributor your injection system will be a BatchFire system and not SEFI......!
Where are those facts on the list below?...Uhhh....I believe there is none....
The internal MAP sucks too..With -24 inches of mercury the lil blue tube was collapsing... I had to get an external 1 bar MAP and use that too.
Then to mention that I ordered 36lb Holley injectors and in the box labeled 36lb injectors #522-368 unknowingly inside that box came 120lb low impedience injectors which I installed them in haste then chose Holley 36lb high impedience injectors and even though Holleys manual states you must choose the correct injector and enter the correct injector values also they state that low impedience injectors wont run on a Term X system but the wrong impedience injectors did indeed run and they ran on the wrong setting too.
I had to cut all maps by 2/3's to get my truck to run as good as they say will run with a base map and whats funny is no expert tuner could figure out the issue looking at my datalogs and even the ones I paid were just as stumped as the generous tuner guys who took time out of their tuning schedules to try and get me ironed out for free but in the end I figured it out the hard way what the issue was when my 8qt oilpan was full of fuel from the excessive powershots of fuel that entered my cylinders in the 3.5 seconds of fuel prime that was recommended by Holley and was used.........
Those extra unused LED's should of been on a chip that verified the proper injectors on one extra LED and the proper sensors with correct info is entered for the setup or give a red , yellow or green at both LEDS but Holley wasnt smart enough to think of that and left two LEDS that do nothing and labeled for future use..
After I got on the phone and raised hell with them and Summit Holley made good on replacing the injectors but when I sent another email that stated my engine along with picture proof was ruined from the gaswashing it received and I got a "sorry for your luck" email and they offered to give me 10% off as an insult to the thousands of dollars in ruined parts I had on my hands due to their bogus system and misboxed fuel injectors so I decided to bash Holley badly which people made me out to be the bad guy and wanted my head on a stick when Im the victim of poor quality and misleading info also predatory tuners promising me a resolution for $450 but tuners just as good as them couldnt figure it out for free as they said theyll help me because they like a challenge.. .......LOL
Had the system do what it said it wont do and thats run with low impedience injectors or run them on the wrong setting too then I wouldnt of ruined my engine if the Term X system couldnt operate as I would of found the issue sooner especially if the system was as smart as they claim and alerted me to the injector error.....
And before anyone says that with 120lb injectors my truck it wouldnt of even ran....Look at the picture of the screen////.Everything seems to look like its on par but it really wasnt.........I have a vid of it running too..It Idled smooth all day until I cracked the butterfly and released it....LOL
Oh and dont get me started about Holleys Limp Home Mode where it sets the idle at 2000 rpm's and having a brand spanking new TKO600.......
Good Luck figuring a solution you'll be happy with.............