Getting the Red/Black 93 Back on the Road?

5.0 and 5.8 have different shaft diameters. The distributors won't interchange, nor will the gears.

If you have a grinder or cutoff wheel or anything like that, touch it to the gear and check the sparks. That'll answer any question.
 
The reason I am harping on the gear so much is that there are differences in cam material. For example my Comp Cams hydraulic roller requires a melonized gear which is different than the run of the mill steel gear. Since Chuck had his engine rebuilt I would think looking at his cam card and calling the cam manufacturer would answer any questions.

Given his track record I would not take any chances.
 
Yeah, you're right about. :(

And I'm definitely surprised that Comp's street rollers are indeed hardened castings instead of steel.
 
When I changed to the roller cam(5.0 was the first) I went with a distributor for a 96 Bronco. It had the hyd roller. I used the pushrods for it too.


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Thanks guys. I took a grinder (well cutoff wheel) to both gears on the bottom (not the teeth) and both gears produced identical sparks, kinda of a bright white-ish orange. Well, I put the new distributor in, got the rotor and distributor as close the the old position as I could, check all the connections and went to start it. And.... nothing, still no spark.

So now what? TFI, ECU? How do I bypass my Crane ignition? One connector is coming out of it, but I don't know exactly where it runs or how to put it back to stock? LOL, this is exactly what I was trying to avoid having my truck gone over 2 years. o_O😅
 
Ooooohhhh Crane ignition. Gotta go. Ug.

If you have a spare coil laying around, that's worth a try, or probe the connector (12V side, not high voltage) and see if it's getting juice. But I have very little confidence in anyone's ignition box anymore. With our ignition systems, it seems to be just an added component that doesn't do much that's useful in our low compression, EFI setups.

When my second one failed, I threw it in the garbage and have ran the factory ignition (except for the coil) since. I have been able to control timing with the ECUs I've used, so the boost retard was no longer needed.

 
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I appreciate the info. But how, do I remove, and/or bypass the Crane? I tried following the wires but got lost in a bunch of wire loom. Is it as simple as "unplug and plug in factory"? Where even is the factory ignition module? I was thinking of going to my storage unit to look for my old coil.

update:
probed the + side of the coil connector with both Key on, and cranking and nothing. So I'm guess its not the coil, and probably wasn't the PIP/distributor either. I'm going to try to pull codes now to see if that helps at all.

Update 2:
I pulled codes, and its possibly not good. I looked up the Foxbody codes and they are the same, the truck has a 91 A9M ECU from my 91 GT running it. I got:
15- ECU ROM failure
67- Neutral Drive Switch Open. I imagine its looking for signal from the neutral switch from a manual 5.0, which the truck won't have. Again seems expected.
81, 82 & 84- All EGR / emissions (all gone, so expected)

and 11 for stored codes, so all good there

Another strange thing I notice today was the big fuse for the ABS is gone, would explain the ABS light on the dash. I don't know why? I don't know if the ABS is controlled by something in the trans "circuit", or the ECU, but my truck has the Mustang ECU with the old Baumann TCS for the trans. Maybe there's no way to control the ABS and the brakes activated?
 
RABS is completely on its own. Mine is disconnected entirely in the white truck.

Do you have a chip in the ECU?

Which Crane box is it? Mine were basically plug and play except for power and ground.

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My rear ABS must be installed, just diabled. Would be nice to not have the ABS light on the dash though.

Yes, the truck does have a chip.

Its the Crane Hi-6, its the first pic. The MSD is not connected to anything. I wanted it for a 2-step for launching, but never hooked it up.

In the 2nd pic there are 3 connectors coming form the Crane that are not in use. But, there are 2 factory wires, black/yellow and yellow/black, that appear to have been removed from a connector somewhere as the ends are still pinned. What are these for?

The 3rd pics shows the connector coming from the Crane. There are appears to be 6 wires in the connector and the go towards the engine. I haven't started cutting zip ties and de-looming wires yet (because I really don't want to if not necessary).
 

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I found a diagram and started hacking away at the engine bay wiring. Out of the 6 pins on the connector it seems only 4 are used, plus the brown wire coming from the Crane runs to the cab. The brown wire is apparently going to the timing retard knob. And the red/white & orange/black wires go to the coil "jumper" harness. On the surface this is much, much easier than I thought it would've been.

I disconnected the "jumper" harness and connected the factory plug into the coil. Before I did that I checked voltage at the positive pin on the connector with key on and got 12v. So I plugged that in, connected the coil wire, connected the new TFI module hit the key and..................................................🦗🦗🦗 yep crickets, nada, cranks but not fire. Didn't even seem like it was trying to light up.

So it now has a new distributor, new TFI, disconnected Crane ignition. The only thing I haven't tried is the coil and computer. Time to go to storage to dig up my stock coil.
 
So it was the coil. I wish I knew that before I tore into it. :cautious: If nothing else, its a good learning experience. So I now have spark, but the timing is so far off its not really even trying to start. i put the original TFI back and and original distributor and still have spark on my inline tester.

So now I need to know how to time the engine as if it was just assembled.
 
It is running and driving again, yes. It's now leaking oil and trans fluid. Plus, still need to sort out the A/C and the wide band O2, put on the spoiler, and the 2 new mirrors. Oh, and yank the Crane ignition out of it. But, I can jump in it anytime fire it up and drive now!
 
There is always a list of things to be done. It's part of the fun! I wouldn't no what to do if I had nothing at all that "needed" to get taken care of.
 
Fun? Upgrades are fun, repairs, eh, not so much. :)

On a positive note, I went out for another 15-mile drive last night, seems to be running well. Tune is still off for cold start, obviously, but idles well when warm. I even took it for a couple of miles don't the highway, gotta say I was a bit nervous. My other cars all have 6-speed transmissions, forgot how high these things rev, LOL! It has a noticeable vibration from the front end at 70+, but I guess it's tires since they are at the very least 15 years old and considering how much the truck has sat.

The old girl still gets some looks though!
 
It's not a matter of "still." It'll be more now than ever! Even my white beater gets tons of attention. I've walked out of the supermarket to guys taking pictures of it, noticed people videoing as I drive down the interstate, etc. It's wild. Probably one out of three times that I get gas, someone walks over to ask about it.

I'm more likely to take it to a car show than I am my fancy performance cars. It's more interesting.

Time to update your signature! ;)
 
Here are a few pics from the last gas fill up of the year. We had snow a few days this week, and they've salted, so the cool cars are tucked away until spring.
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