im looking at swaping a 302 in my 91 ranger reg cag. its a 2.3 4banger with a 5 speed. i wanna know peoples opinion on which would be better or easier fuel injected 302 or carb 302. and on a scale of 1-10 whats the difficulty level.

 

Carb is basic and simple, If your looking for something rather easy go carb. EFI is better IMO, but wiring can be an issue if you don't know what your doing.

 

1 being changing spark plugs and 10 being back half your truck and body drop it, id say 4 or 5. the 302 has some aftermarket support to make ranger installation easier. if you go carb you need to change the fuel system to lower pressure.

 

thanks yall i think i will go carb on the 302. i can do wiring but not a big fan of it so i really just want to do something easy.

 

I just finished my efi 5.0 swap on my 90 Bronco2 not to long ago. EFI is the only way I would do it!Truck fires right up,purs like a kitten and gets over 17mpg on the highway on 35" tires!

Find my build thread on here if you see a step by step on how I did mine.

 

carb usually has a harder time as you go up in altitude and mpg's are usually worse.

EFI FTW....the extra bit of work will pay for itself many times. this is 2011 after all, carb is old tech by today's standards. sack up and do it right the first time lol. you only have one life, make the most of it and don't waste your time wasting time on a carb...

thats my 2 cents lol

 

My old 81 F250 got the Holley 4bbl TBI kit on the 460. Bolts on just like a Carb would, plug it in and you have fuel injection, that easy!
In my humble opinion, it is 2011, there is no reason to have anything that is not injected. Unless you are a wiz at tuning a carb ( I am definitely not) FI is definitely the way to go.

 

and if you are going for simplicities sake, stay away from a motor swap. its a whole crap load of work. if you are willing to swap a motor in the first place and have the ability, then a EFI motor swap is not outside of your reach. consider that

 

ok thanks. now i have just started looking at the 2.3 turbo motor out of the svo/tbird turbo coupe. does anybody know if i can still be competitive on the track with that motor. thats kinda what im goin for a dependable weekend warrior. thanks for all the info.

 

Can they be made to be competitive on the track? lol Boy do I have some stories I could tell you!!

Ask all the street cars running around Toledo and south of Detroit bout my old 2.3t 87 Ranger!

Here an old vid of mine racing a EVO on 4 slicks while Im on a old set of BFG drag radials.I had to lift early since it pushed the headgasket out but still coasted to a 12.50 at 110
http://www.streetfire.net/video/svo-...urbo_13039.htm

 

dude that was sick as hell. that really makes me just want to do the 2.3t. good power and better mpg than a 302. are they still dependable like if my fiance and i wanted to go to the mountains we could drive it and not worry bout breaking down every 10 min.

 

I was actually thinking of swapping over to EFI since my motor came EFI.

Carb is easy and I love it, but I need to pull a few more mpg's out of this thing.

 

I drove mine 365 days a year for 3 years with only a couple break downs that were mostly my fault. Drove the truck no less than 80 miles a day to and from work.

Then EFI is the only way to go.

 

Well, if your talking about how much time, then a carb swap would be better, would easily take half the time, depending on your experience.

 

I'm arguing that the extra time spent swapping in an EFI will be worth the effort over say the time savings of using a carb motor. But this depends on what the OP is skilled at, or is willing to learn.

Tune a carb correctly and know how to tune it when situations call for it, then a carb swap WOULD be better than an EFI IF the OP knows nothing about wiring. Less down time.

On the flip side:

Swap an EFI motor in and wire it correctly and it will operate consistently under all driving circumstances (sea level, 9000ft etc), THEN an EFI swap (while taking up more time in your garage while you wire it) will save you time in the long run. No down time ever after that.

The 4 extra weeks in my garage required for an EFI swap were I to do one, would be worth the few extra MPG's and me having peace of mind that the motor requires no tuning ever under different driving circumstances.

I'm basing this off myself though, and me being a wheeler, would need my motor swap to ALWAYS work with no hassles.

 

1987 ranger // my 5.0 is a 1980 w/ a AFB 500cfm,348 gears, it gets 15mpg as long as I don't go over 55,thats with or without the air on, cruise at 65 or 70 and you can almost watch the needle move