I have been delving into Ford speed density anf MAF fuel injection systems for swap purposes on my Ford vans, but ti got me thinkning about possibly going to MAF on my brother's 74 Duster.

I have ben looking around at Ford fuel injection sites and I see that Ford made a 4.0 v-6 motor that used MAF and it is also possible to convert a Ford 2.9 v-6 to MAF.

My thoughts would be that adapting a Ford MAF system to a slant six would be fairly easy, except for geting the speed sensor to work with the chrysler transmission.

I haven't purchased any parts or done any sort of work on this yet, I am just kicking around ideas and researching at this point.

Is anyone out there running a Ford system? MAF or otherwise? Any obvious errors in my thinkning?

Thanks.

Forget looking at the Ford fuel injection sites. They will tell you nothing. If you want to convert to an OEM FI control system such as a Ford, you really need to use an OBDII. I am not sure, but you may be able to shut off the speed sensor - which, in turn, will shut off a lot of other stuff. Speed density is primitive compared to OBDII - which is all MAF. Off the top of my head, some of the things you would need to do to this are:

1. Setup some kind of crank trigger device. Not difficult.
2. Setup a fuel injector rail with a pressure regulator.
3. Install a throttle position sensor, an oxygen sensor and maybe a couple of other sensors.
4. Wire in the powertrain control module which includes the main harness connector and the associated wiring.

Relatively speaking, this would not be a small undertaking, but this is do-able. What you would get, in the end, would be a powerful control system that would afford control over a vast array of of engine performance parameters and variables. And the big plus is you would be able to do high speed datalogging which is essential for custom calibration work.

Now as far as doing the calibration work to make this work with your vehicle, that too is do-able and I may be able to help you with calibration software that will allow you to flash the PCM with your custom calibration work. You would have to learn a little about how the Ford programming logic works and this would require somewhat of a steep learning curve, but again, this is do-able.

This would not be a small task and once started, you would have to be willing to follow through to completion.

Mitch

For the record, there are some OBD-II speed density systems, particularly from Honda and Chrysler. I'm not aware of any OBD-II pure speed density Fords, just wanted to clarify that. I have seen one or two OBD-II Fords that combined speed density and a MAF.

Can you get the Ford hardware to run without a cam sensor, or wouldn't that be needed too?

While I didn't get the Ford ECU, I actually have a fair amount of Ford hardware on my Dart - the throttle body and TPS are Ford parts, one of the two fuel pumps is OEM spec for a Ford, and I've put a Ford style trigger wheel on the crankshaft pulley. I'm not too familiar with the inner workings of their ECUs, though.

Some of the OBD-II hardware may be harder to adapt than others - you'd need an ECU that doesn't expect to hear back from a ton of smog sensors unless your tuning software can lock those out. Mitch, what models can your software tweak?

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"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

You would need a camshaft sensor. All Ford OBDII passenger car PCMs use a MAF feed forward strategy. Software for virtually all PCMs can be made available. The emission control stuff is not a problem.

Mitch

I am now thinking of grabbing the one year only Ford MAF system off of a 96 truck with a 300. I am fairly certain it is OBD-II and doesn't use a cam sensor. The firing order is 1-5-3-6-2-4 and it appears to be triggered off the distributor. I figure a lean burn distributor controlled by the Duraspark/computer, fabricate an adapter plate for the throttle body, add the O2 sensor and other sensors (but a hydraulic head and mid 80s intake should have all the proper sensor bungs) and I would be in business. Still musing about this.

Thoughts?

The '96 system is a signature PIP TFI, so you'd need to stuff the guts of the TFI distributor into a Lean Burn body. Without the unequally sized vanes in the distributor, the ECU will be a bit confused about which cylinder is firing.

_________________
"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

Hmmm. Okay, thanks. I will keep researching this.

Check out a 92-93 T-bird/Cougar 3.8L fuel injection. They were MAF systems, didn't have an electronic transmission and use the same ECM as a 5.0L Mustang. The tweecer computer works with them so you can make changes with a laptop. You can pick up lots of 5.0L stuff dirt cheap. You will need to modify a distributor. I have already got mine done. Cut the bottom half off of a slant distributor, take the top half of the 3.8L distributor, tig weld the two together, have the 3.8L dist. shaft turned down on a crank grinder to the slant six size so it will fit in the OE bushing, then cut the extra lenth off. Drill it for the roll pin for the dist. drive gear, make a hold down bracket and your ready to go. The distributor is the hard part, the rest is easy. You could also get a crank trigger with cam sensor built in and do the same thing.

I have mine all done except getting the injector bungs welded into the intake. Ran out of money a couple years ago. Hope to get going soon.

Thanks!

Use a crank trigger setup and you can probably convert the distributor into a cam sensor trigger. You can turn off the automatic trans functions on any PCM as well as any or all of the emissions stuff including the ready monitors. The later PCMs have a faster clock speed, better programming logic and much better datalogging ability.

Mitch

But the purpose of using a Mass Air Flow Sensor is to compute the mass air flow. Assuming that you could find a way to use the crank trigger sensor or rig one up of your own and a cam sensor. Wouldn't this work? The electronics don't give a damn what kind of mechanical engine it's nounted on as long as the correct inputs are sent into the ECU, the outputs should be good. That being said, I know Ford's electronic tach signal is different from what GM and Chrysler uesd.

Is there anyway to use the Jeep ECM, wiring harness and a modified distributor? Then maybe use the Painless Perfection kit for a 4.0L Jeep to tune the engine. I know that the Jeep 4.0 liter engine uses a Ford distributor.

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David Gibson

That's the biggest potential problem, too... the outputs are going to be the same no matter what the engine is. Without a way to hack the ECU, you can be stuck with the equivalent of a distributor that you can't recurve.

Actually, it was the 4.2 that used a Ford Duraspark; the 4.0 distributor isn't all that closely related to Fords. Jeep engines used a couple of oddball crank triggers. The earliest ones used a Rennix wheel; later ones used 3 equally spaced patches of 4 teeth each. Pretty weird thing found nowhere else.

The Painless Perfect kit is actually a Delphi MEFI-4 aftermarket standalone - and interestingly enough, it doesn't appear to use the stock Jeep crank trigger. Instead, they modify the Jeep distributor with their own sensor wheel.

_________________
"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

If you are going to use Ford pushrod 5.0 V-8 fuel injection components, ignition should not be a problem. Electromotive Fuel Injection (TEC-1, TEC-2, and TEC-3 systems), out of Chantilly , Virginia has a multi-coil pack ignition system, XDI (http://www.electromotive-inc.com/products/xdi.html), that has been run with Ford's 5.0 Mustang GT, and in a drag race application Slant-Six. From what I've read, it uses a 59 tooth weel bolted to the balancer for the crank trigger. As the pushrod 5.0 was available in OBD-1 (Mustang) and OBD-2 (Explorer), I wouldn't think this would be too hard to use, but I believe that it's fairly pricey.

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David Gibson