Best head/intake combo
- Thread starter Davinrobinson1
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What's your goals for the car? A fun weekend cruiser, daily driver, or all out race car?
BTW, the stock ignition on your car is fine. You can upgrade the coil, but unless you have a need for it, I'd stick with the stock system.
Clean looking 94' btw!
BTW, the stock ignition on your car is fine. You can upgrade the coil, but unless you have a need for it, I'd stick with the stock system.
Clean looking 94' btw!
What are you looking to accomplish? For a street driven car that you just want a little more power out of Trick Flow 170 or AFR 165 heads paired with a TrickFlow Street, Edelbrock Performer, or Cobra intake provide a good bump in performance without making your car a dog below 3000 RPMs.
400 HP will be hard to attain N/A with a stock bottom end, you really have to pull some RPM's to get a pushrod 5.0 into those numbers. But you can make as much power as you want, all depends how much you want to spend.
350 crank HP would be a more attainable number, IMO, for a street driven, stock block, 5.0 pushrod motor. It's all about the combo. I'd look at the Trick Flow top end kits as they are well priced, contain most of the parts you need, are a matched combo, and have proven dyno results. If you're looking to save money, there are other options out there that you can piece together.
https://www.trickflow.com/search/department/top-end-kits/make/ford/engine-size/5-0l-302
I'd look at the 350HP kit as your base kit and can go from there (depending on what you want to spend). My 95' cobra had the 360HP kit with a Stage 2 Cam, BBK longtubes, full exhaust, tweecer tuner, 75MM TB, ect and made over 330RWHP (very close to their 360 at the crank claim). It was a very fun car to drive, though I'd probably stick to the stage 1 cam and the street heat intake for a street car (more bottom end torque).
If you're looking to get the most HP as possible, look at the kits with the 11r heads. The 170's and the AFR 165's are also both good heads, couldn't go wrong with either one IMO.
350 crank HP would be a more attainable number, IMO, for a street driven, stock block, 5.0 pushrod motor. It's all about the combo. I'd look at the Trick Flow top end kits as they are well priced, contain most of the parts you need, are a matched combo, and have proven dyno results. If you're looking to save money, there are other options out there that you can piece together.
https://www.trickflow.com/search/department/top-end-kits/make/ford/engine-size/5-0l-302
I'd look at the 350HP kit as your base kit and can go from there (depending on what you want to spend). My 95' cobra had the 360HP kit with a Stage 2 Cam, BBK longtubes, full exhaust, tweecer tuner, 75MM TB, ect and made over 330RWHP (very close to their 360 at the crank claim). It was a very fun car to drive, though I'd probably stick to the stage 1 cam and the street heat intake for a street car (more bottom end torque).
If you're looking to get the most HP as possible, look at the kits with the 11r heads. The 170's and the AFR 165's are also both good heads, couldn't go wrong with either one IMO.
mikestang63
SN Certified Technician
Mine idles remarkably well with an aftermarket cam, not perfect, but good enough to break in a little before putting on a dyno. An aftermarket tune should definitely be done though.
350 crank HP n/a will be plenty fun on the street.
Of course, you'll always want more.
Of course, you'll always want more.
My wife's 98 3.8 (I know it ain't the same) was a nice ride and after warranty I thought seriously about a 5.0-T5 swap. Talking to many who had done it they said NO! It appears the computer hates aftermarket goodies and its brain never was able to find the sweet spot. If done get a matching computer for the modes made. I love the 5.0 but with FI and computer controlled ignition, everything must match up perfectly or nothing works right. Somebody on this site can probably point you in the right direction but be very careful about on-line info.
My 96 started life as a v6 and now has a 347. If you find a donor car it’s pretty much a plug n play deal.
It's pretty much a given you should always tune for the mods you have, especially major mods like heads/cam/intake/ect. In my list above, I mention I used a tweecer which I did my own tuning with. There's plenty of other self tuning options as well as guys you can work with to tune the car for you. The combo I listed above is a pretty common combo, lots of tuners have files already put together that would work for those mods. If you would ever go the tweecer route, I have plenty of baseline files that would get you started.
find a good local guy with a dyno who can burn you a chip. mail order tunes for the older non-ob2 stuff is tricky because there's not much in the way of datalogging unless you go with something like a pms or quarterhorse, and you can tune those yourself. sn's are even trickier.
as far as hardware goes, i always suggest using the tfs kit as a reference of all that types parts you'll need for the swap, but picking your own components. theres a lot more , better, options out there now that perform better for around the same price. but other than a bigger tb and injectors, it's a good list of all the hard parts you'll need.
if i was doing a hci for a 302 these days, id be looking at either afr185's (skip the 165's, theres no need to go tiny on heads), or the tfs 190 11r (the older 170s are still good, but the 11r's are better enough for the price jump just for the valve hardware alone, and again no reason to use tiny parts). tfs heads are probably a little easier because you can use a bigger cam with them with the stock pistons before you start running into clearance issues.
for an intake i'd look for a holley systemax, edelbrock rpm2, or a tfs r (not the box). the gt40/explorer/cobra stuff is cool and works great with gt40 iron heads, but it sounds like you want bigger.
talk to one of the custom cam guys for whichever setup you use, this is probably the most important part, the cam is the mechanical brain of the engine and if it's not right you'll never really get what you want out of it.
fwiw, the last running combo in my fox was very similar to hoysters (sans the lt's) and made the same power (330) which doing math for drivetrain losses is around the 370-380hp crank level. if the rest of the car is setup right (mine wasnt) thats a high-to-mid 11s car.
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