EFI swap with coil packs

[old69bronco]

has any one done this swap i herd its a hard swap to do i have got the full motor out of a 97 explorer full wire harness and ecu i have a efi tank and the o2's also i got the swap in just need to do wireing is there any other things i will need????? all new fuel line and fuel pump also.

 

[DirtDonk]

I'd love to do it myself, but will stick with the distributor type for now.
A few have done it, but not many that I'm aware of. Search for posts by Lars to see if he's done any writeups on his. Another friend of mine has done it just recently too, but he's not on here often and I'm pretty sure he's not written with any details about it.

Good luck. Hopefully someone who's done it will see your post.

Paul

 

[Steve83]

If you use the stock harness that fits that engine & PCM, then you don't have to worry about how the ignition system works - it's already done. Just put it all into your eB exactly the way it came out of the Ex, and it'll work exactly the way it was designed to. Don't delete or defeat any of the emissions systems - it wouldn't help you, but it could hurt the engine & make it less-reliable.

 

[HGM]

I completely agree with Steve. He and I are among the few firm believers in the more modern ignition and control systems.. I've been a little slow on my build, but I'm putting the '96 Explorer engine in my truck, running the harness now. I believe I've posted pic's of the left fender, in progress. Your biggest challenge is deciding how far you want to go. It is plug and play, but you've got to put em somewhere. I guess how neat it looks would be the bigger question. I'm just about done with the dash wiring, and plan to "shrink" the harness a bit today. Their close in size, but the harness is about 8" too long for the way I'm runnning it.. You dont have to go quite as far as me, but mine has got the '96 brake booster, column and airbag(havent decided if its going to stay or not).. If you're comfortable with wires, go for it.

 

[lars]

Dave on this forum has a build thread on his swap. Do a search. He did an excellent job describing his installation of a complete, intact Explorer 5.0, including the PATS anti-theft system, all cats, custom fuel tank utilizing the Explorer pump, vapor recovery system, etc. He also used the 4R70W automatic so the PCM is controlling everything as Ford intended.

I'm running a bastard combo. It's an EEC-IV system using an A9L PCM, with a Tweecer to turn on the EDIS functionality (the A9xx PCM's had EDIS capability built in to the software, but Ford never utilized it in a production car), and an EEC-IV EDIS module from a 1994 Crown Vic (starting in 1992 the Crown Vic got the 4.6 liter mod motor; the PCM didn't have built-in EDIS control capability, but instead depended on an external module, essentially replacing the TFI module found on the Windsor engines). I created the engine harness from parts of a Mustang 5.0 harness, Explorer 5.0 harness and the Crown Vic donor. It looks cool, gives me some bragging rights and theoretically has more stable timing (now controlled off the crank trigger instead of the distributor) but really it doesn't run any better than it did with the TFI distributor. Plus, getting it to run right required learning the Tweecer and related software. Not for the faint of heart.

Since I have a manual transmission and will probably move the whole mess to a 351W stroker eventually anyway, the factory Explorer hardware doesn't interest me too much- and besides, I like to experiment. But since you have the intact Explorer 5.0 and related hardware, I would tend to agree with the others that recommend the complete Explorer install. Ford learned a few things over the years; I've never driven a 5.0 Explorer but I'm guessing that keeping the EEC-V system intact would make for a very nice-running package.