Hello, new to this forum. Now I am totaly confused on this roller cam thing and the steel-cast iron dizzy gear, so ill take a chance and go for it and hope for the best,lol. 1987 merc grand marquis, stock, got from an old man, my dad. Im gonna need a distributor, so, steel or cast iron gear??? Or, how can i tell without cracking open engine. Man at autozone hasnt a clue. Thanks in advance, Bill
If it is 87 for sure, it will be a roller cam engine. So you need the 85 Mustang GT distributor with the steel gear, if you are going to run the engine with a carb. cheers Ed N.
ummmmm, no, its stock , multi fuel injected complete stock, need stock distrib, but is it steel or cast??? thanks
Sorry, I was assuming a carb swap. In any case, it is a roller cam, so you do need a steel gear on the distributor. Any 86 - 91 Crown Vic / Grand Marquis / Lincoln Town Car 5.0L unit will be fine. They don't go bad very often, so you could likely pick up a good used one cheap. cheers Ed N.
The only way to be sure if it is roller cam or not is to remove a valve cover and pull a rocker arm and push rod and measure the push rod. 6.25" long is roller cam, 6.876 is non-roller.
That's good advice, certainly an easy way to check for sure. You never know if the donour car has had an engine transplant somewhere along the way. cheers Ed N.
Hummmm, just found this----5.0L Full Size Car This engine was used in 1982-1990 Crown Victoria and Grand Marquis. They use the 289-302 firing order, 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8. Most of these cars are not roller cam equipped, however sometime in the early 1990s they started using roller cams but retained the 302 firing order. They use a standard (clockwise) rotation water pump and front cover. Now Im confused again,lol...Bill
By the Ford parts catalogue, roller cams started in 1986 on the passenger car 5.0L engines. But I have seen people state that they have run across late 80s full-size cars that had flat tappet engines. I'd take bluebolt's advice, pull a valve cover to check the pushrod length. cheers Ed N.
I'm running a 5.0 from an '87 E-150 van in my T bucket. When I rebuilt the engine, the engine cost like $100 more than other years. PAW told me it's becuase the piston rings had been changed to a "metric" size. Also, if you change rotation of the water pump, you will need a different timing chain cover, the water passages are shaped diferently. And a note to all you guys swapping from EFI to Carbs - I'll take all that junk EFI crap off your hands
What intake are you going to use? There is a 3x2 conversion that bolts right on to the bottom section of the injection set up, hides all the nasty bits and looks pretty good. Im looking for a link to them but not having much luck. They are Aussy made, I thought chopper had them at Kustoms.com.au but?? Doc.
Not neccessarily, they used reverse rotation pumps with standard timing chain covers. The holes on the back of these pumps are usually round. Trucks with serpentine belts supposedly had the true reverse rotation pumps and covers. In the attached pictures are a 87 F150, 96 F150 and 93 Mustang water pump. Check out the differnence in the holes on the back cover. In all my fooling around with FI Fords with reverse rotation water pumps I have only come across 1 true reverse rotation cover.
Uh, I don't know about that man. An "EFI cam" Would still need vacuum to pull air into the motor, right? This conversion has been done many times w/o problems. Nothing about an "efi cam" profile will cause problems with vacuum. A roller cam will be different, but will still work well with a carb.
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