The Ford 302 Engine: Everything You Need To Know

hey everyone i'm landon with lmr.com in this video we're going to talk about the small block ford engine and how it has been an enthusiast favorite for over 50 years all right i'm just going to go ahead and say it there is so much to talk about when it comes to ford's almighty small block however to keep this video from getting too long-winded and boring you guys to death i'm going to cover some of the higher level changes throughout the 1979-1995 era now i know some of you guys are probably thinking hey man the 302 came way before 1979. trust me i know that since we specialize in 1979 to present mustang restoration and performance parts i'm going to talk about the history of the push rod small block from 1979 to 1995. all right so a brief history lesson first the ford small block v8 design work originally began in 1960. a guy by the name of george st rot headed up the engineering group which was code named the canadian x project the first engine debuted in the form of a 221 cubic inch small block that was offered in the ford fairlane it was equipped with a standard two barrel carburetor and was rated at 145 horsepower and 216 pound-feet of torque in 1963 the engine was overboard to 260 cubic inches then in 1964 that engine was also overboard to 289 cubic inches then a few short years later the 289 was stroked to a 302 the 302 cubic inch engine was first referred to by ford as a 5.0 liter v8 which was a metric unit of measurement rather than the u.s customary notation from 1979 to 1995 the mustang 302 was a liquid cooled overhead valve 90 degree v8 engine so the early days in the fox mustang in 1979 the 5.0 liter engine was a carryover from the 1978 mustang ii this engine had an aluminum intake manifold a two-barrel carb and california-bound cars received a variable interior a single snorkel air cleaner was used and new for 1979 was an aluminum water pump and a single belt accessory drive this engine was rated at 140 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque with an 8.4 to 1 compression ratio the engine block and cylinder heads were cast iron and for what it's worth ford used cast iron for the engine blocks and cylinder heads throughout the production of the small block 302 in the fox body and the 1994 and 1995 sn95 mustangs for 1984 it introduced a new version of its small block v8 engine it was a 4.2 liter or 255 cubic inch variant of the 302 which had a smaller bore of 3.68 inches essentially think of it as a scaled-down version of the 302. this engine was rated at 118 horsepower and 193 pound-feet of torque this engine was a direct result of ford efforts to meet the ever more stringent cafe requirements for fuel mileage cafe stands for corporate average fuel economy the 4.2 liter engine fortunately enough for us enthusiasts was only around for two model years which was 1980 in 1981. the return of the 302 in the mustang coincidentally came in 1982 which was the same year the gt model returned in the lineup the new 5-0 carried an ajo tag which was short for high output the camshaft was taken from a 351 windsor engine that ford used in their torino and a double roller timing chain replaced the previous silent link chain the firing order was also changed from 154-26378 to the 351 windsor sequence of 137-26548 the cylinder heads were larger than those of the 4.2 liter and most people refer to this as quote-unquote normal 5-0 intake ports it featured a motorcraft carb which was rated at 368.5 cfm the intake manifold was cast aluminum the engine block was also gray instead of blue and this was the first year for the gray color the distinctive 15-inch air cleaner assembly was derived from the 351 ford ltd high output police engine package its twin snorkel design drew cool air through the inner fenders via flexible rubber tubes other visual improvements included aluminum powered by ford valve covers this 5-0 high output engine was rated at 157 horsepower and 240 pound-feet of torque from 1983 to 1985 the 302 didn't change all that much for the 1983 mustang the 5-liter engine received a four-barrel holley 600 cfm carb which allowed for additional horsepower this iteration of the 5-liter engine was rated at 175 horsepower and 245 pound-feet of torque the compression ratio was 8.3 to 1 and an ac compressor cutoff was added whenever the engine saw wide open throttle in 1984 ford added its cfi or central fuel injection to the four-speed automatic transmission mustangs the four-barrel carb came with a redesigned automatic choke and was rated at 165 horsepower which was 10 less than the manual however torque remained the same at 245 pound-feet one other minor change on the cfi version of the 302 was the use of a cast iron intake manifold versus the dual plane aluminum manifold on non-cfi engines for 1985 the first rollercam 5-liter engine was offered the roller design allows for more cam lift and more aggressive low profiles than traditional flat tappet designs this version of the 302 was now rated at 210 horsepower and 270 pound-feet of torque the automatic transmission equipped mustangs with cfi still used the non-roller engine and in early 1985 they were rated at 165 horsepower and 245 pound-feet of torque however late in 1985 those cfi equipped engines did receive a bump in power to 180 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque 1985 was the last year with a carbureted 302 in the mustang in an effort to avoid the federal government's gas guzzler tax in 1986 the ford engineers developed their sequential electronic multi-point fuel injection with speed density management unlike the previous years where there were two versions of the 302 the engineers finally took the simple route and only offered one iteration of the 5-0 with the addition of s-e-f-i there were quite a few changes to this engine in 1986 at first glance the most noticeable change was the upper and lower intake manifolds the short block featured flat top pistons without any valve release this did bump the compression ratio to 9.2 to 1. while this engine produced less horsepower than the 85 version at 200 horsepower it did make 285 pound-feet of torque which was an increase of 15 pound-feet in 1987 there were more changes to the 302. the short block featured a redesigned forged piston with a 30 000 deep dish and valve reliefs which netted a 9 to 1 compression ratio the cylinder heads were also revised and had a casting number of e7te although early 87 cars did have e5 te cylinder heads which were first used on the 1985 truck engines the cylinder head was used on lx and gt mustangs until the retirement of the fox body mustang in 1993. the 1987 version of the small block 302 was rated at 225 horsepower and 300 pound-feet of torque this rating would carry over through the 1992 model year california-bound car saw the addition of a mass airflow system in 1988 but all other cars were still speed density in 1989 however ford did transition all the mustangs to the mass air system up until 1993 the 5.0 would remain unchanged all right so here comes 1993 the year ford underrated its 302s in preparation for the complete mustang redesign in 1994. the standard 5-0 ratings in the lx and gt were lowered to 205 horsepower and 275 pound-feet of torque even the gt40 version of the 5.0 and the 1993 cobra also had a very conservative rating of 235 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque however chassis dynos proved these flywheel ratings were somewhat mediocre for 1994-1995 ford rated the high output 302 at 215 horsepower and 285 pound-feet of torque while still very debatable the power improvement over the 1993 engine was primarily from airflow improvements the ford engineer supplied a larger mass airflow meter which was the same size as the 93 cobra with ford making the switch for the 4.6 liter modular engines in 1996 for the mustang they did produce the 302 up until 2001 which was an engine option in the ford explorer and it was standard in the mercury mountaineer on december 6th of 2000 a ceremony was held at cleveland engine plant 1 to celebrate the assembly of ford's final 5-liter push rod v8 engine and for one final tidbit of random information there were roughly 10 000 of these engines shipped to port of australia to be used in its falcon line to this day the small block 302 is still strong supported by the aftermarket from cylinder heads camshafts valve train components engine blocks and so on and so forth it's hard to beat some good old-school hot riding in a world filled with high-tech state-of-the-art engine technology that'll do it for this video if you liked it give it a thumbs up subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one and turn on notifications that way you don't miss future uploads until next time for all things 1979 to present mustang and svt lightning keep it right here with the real enthusiasts lmr.com

Channel: Late Model Restoration

Views: 46,185

Rating: 4.9554138 out of 5

Keywords: lmr, late model resto, late model restoration

Id: W8qMYd2qrLg

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021