gtucker4

Hi folks, I've been in the market for a new Mustang, with project ideas in mind. My question has to do with the 5.0 302 CIDF motor. My grandmother had a '90 Lincoln Town Car with this engine in it, and we still have the car now that she's passed a while back. I noticed that in stock form, it's kind of a strange powerplant, with only 150hp, but 270 ft lbs of torque. I'm not too familiar with these engines, having driven imports pretty much all my life, but every time I try to look this thing up online, it always guides me to Mustang info, so I thought I'd drop in early before my ride gets ordered from the factory. Does anybody know if the '90 Town Car's version of the 302 engine can use the performance parts meant for the Mustang variant? It seems like a real shame to let the engine go to waste, as the car has electrical problems that keep it from running, but low miles for a 17 year old car. Any help would be much greatly appreciated. Thanks all.

musclemustang94

uhm i dont know that you will you be ordering a car with a 5.0 these days. As for the lincoln. Its a 5.0...i dotn know if the tune is diffrent....or if the heads are diffrent...or why it only has 150 horse. As for the torque...welcome to the world of V8's. I wouldn't be surprsied if that that thing had diffrent heads than a mustang...as well as a diffrent cam. Other than that...its still a 5.0. Just get a stang dude...unless you are going to do an HCI swap on that thing.

gtucker4

Yeah, I already knew that I wasn't ordering a 5.0, they haven't had those since, what, '95? I was talking about the 5.0 in the '90 Town Car. I'm looking at getting a 4.0 V6 from the factory, and then building up from there. For insurance purposes, as well as car payment purposes. I just thought since I had a spare 5.0 V8 hanging around, that I may as well use it, if I can. The parts that you mentioned that are probably different, I'm wondering if I can use the Mustang performace parts on the Lincoln engine. I'm torn on whether I'll just tune the Town Car as is, and have a Lincoln that hauls, or transplant the V8 into a different car. I'm open to suggestions either way, so please give me any feedback you can. I was pretty intrigued with all the projects I was trying to put together when I had some non-GT-R Skylines in Japan, and I'm more open to American performance tuning now, since it seems to be a LOT cheaper. Hope you 'Stang guys can give me some pointers, and make my transition over to domestic performance as smooth as possible.

musclemustang94

Mustang performance parts will work on that engine...however I have a feeling the cam and heads are diffrent so you wont see as much of an improvement as far as bolt on stuff goes. If you swap the heads, cam, and intake you can easily see 350 horse or more from it. Holley advertises 375 horse with their set up. Spray that with a little nitrous and you easily have a 500 horsepower engine. Its so easy to make retarded power with big v8 engines. The fox is a popular car for the same reason honda hatchbakcs are. They hardly weigh anything. A notchback fox with a 5 speed weighs about 2700 lbs i believe...i am not sure about this but it is fairly light for a muscle car. But basically you've got a high 11 second car with minmum investment...plus....no japaneese car is as popular as the mustang. At least back in the day...when the 'stang first came out ford sold over hafl a million in the first year and even more the second. **** they still sell 200,000 a year! Mostly v6 mustangs but it truly is a speical car eihter way.

gtucker4

That sounds cool, I was thinking I would have to swap out some engine parts to get the best gains, just need to make sure I actually can. For me, 300-375 hp is cool, I don't want so much that it won't be streetable, or drink gas too much. I need an idea on which parts are essential for power, and who gives the best bang for the buck on each part. Then, maybe I'll start to try to bolt things on, depending on what you guys think can be done. How hard would the swap into a current gen Mustang be, just out of curiosity?I hate the 80's gen body, it's ugly. The current, and last gen body styles are what made me start to consider getting one.

vt89gtvert

The weight is a little off. it is more like 3200, but you can get the weight down to 2700 with some effort (It's not easy but possible). Also since there are so many 5.0's out there, and since people have been upgrading them for so long,the prices of parts are lower.

gtucker4

Ok, so lead me down the most logical road to acheive the best possible performance out of the '90 Town car 5.0 V8. Where should I start, and how much can be done? I'm not looking for track power, so sub 500hp is definitely alright. I plan on making whatever car I build using this engine a show AND go type project, so it's gotta have a little bit of grunt to it, but I'm definitely looking to be as frugal as I can. Whatever I can save on go fast parts, I plan on using to make it look goooood.... :-D Oh, and make some suggestions on what kind of cars I can drop it into, if I decide not to get the new '07, or don't decide to keep it in the Lincoln.

86 5.0L

forget that lincoln 5.0 its a pig, bost anchor, waste of time,

what you want is a 5.0 HO depending on the year, best was the 89-92 5.0, MAF, forged internals and 225HP

gearbanger

since your into imports drop the 302 into a 240sx,rx7,old Z,light car with v8 = major fun..... just a thought

gtucker4

Hey man, I know the 5.0 I got in the '90 Town Car isn't high output, but it is FREE! Your looking at it in stock form, I'm just needing to know how to get higher output from it, and how much that's going to cost, ballpark figure. From what I've heard so far, a 5.0 is a 5.0, so I'm guessing that I'll need some Mustang specific parts to put on it, to get the most out of it. I just really need to know what can fit, and what should I use for the best performance/value combination I can get. By the way, dropping it into an import sounds cool, but mega expensive, both in time and money... Unless there's kit body cars out there I could drop it into, like replica cobras and such.