ttbit

I love and miss my 302. I think I am going to do another Ranger with a 302 for my daily beater again. AFR heads, mild cam, ported Explorer intake = 300+ to the rear wheels and torque. And some torque. Torque also.

Getting rid of the 302 when they just had it mastered was stupid. I saw a 200,000 mile '94 302 tore down and you could still see the hash marks in the cylinders. Ring and sling was done just for safety measures. They are so cheap to build and you get so much out of them. Now, if you want to build an all out race motor, people may argue, but for a great fun street car, the 302 has great potential and many options. It fits in just about any car too. People ragged on the hyper pistons they used in '93 and up, but the rings and setup on those last engines lasted forever. I had 10# boost at over 130,000 miles with no problems.

salsa037

u guys remeber the 03-04 mach1 they got 310 compared to a 260hp GT then the 05 got almost the same engine/hp wouldnt be surprised if the boss comes out then the next year the new GT would get the engine or close in hp

Boomer

Yeah, that'd be a cool conversion that I'd love to have.

Another one I've always thought was killer, was having a 302 in the Miata/MX-5

Talk about a sleeper (well.. i mean..if you have a quiet exhaust
Rolling coffin on wheels...but a sleeper

future9er24

Nothing wrong with a Coffin on wheels I love mine

I too would be a fan of seeing the old 302 tricked out and updated in the new Mustangs. I wouldn't want the 4.6L replaced but it would be nice to have the option of choosing which V8 goes into your car. The more engine options, the better

ttbit

Yea... I have done two Rangers over time for myself and one for a friend and they make great daily drivers on top of being fun. Very reliable with the fuel injection. Miata w/302 has got to be fun. A friend of mine did a 302 RX7 (2nd gen) that he has been driving for years now. He has Edel Perf RPM heads, E Cam, and it is carbd. Sweet car.

Hey...I like "IIs" also!! My first V8 car was a '75 MII. That hooked me on the 302. This is the first time in 20 years that I didn't own something with a 302. At least I still have an Explorer intake, A9L and parts and some E7 heads in the garage.

The 4.6 does seem to rev up with no dropping off though. I like it. It is just a completely different beast. I would like to see how a 5.4 or some other larger displacement modular drives in this thing, for sure. I know a positive displacement SC would solve all low-end issues, but I am not ready to go back to FI at this time.

boduke0220

well now all they need is the GT350, boss,a 5.0 motor and common sense

future9er24

ttbit,

Glad to see another fan of the II :P it was my first V8 car (well, after some work..) too. But I agree with you on the notion of the mod motors revving. The 302 in my II seems to begin to die off at around 5K and is not really all that helpful at 6K. The 4.6L though, that thing never quits once you start revving

Owning the pushrod and the mod V8s is very much the best of both worlds

rhumb

Yes, of course, but the Vette's always been a fiberglass bodied two seater with about the same price premium (percentage-wise) over the Stang GT. Yet the Stang gets fat and heavy while the Vette stays lean and light, all while maintaining that same (maybe 50% or so) price premium over a contemporary Stang.

Just seems GM, at least in the Vette shop, is exercising greater engineering rigor and discipline than Ford in terms of mass without driving up its relative price -- just shows that it CAN be done.

Tony Alonso

It's easier to do, in my opinion, when you are only packaging for 2 people, not 4.

One thing GM has done well, in addition to the unibody structure, is optimize the pushrod engine and amortize it over a large line of vehicles. That has provided a key weight advantage for Corvette.

If a new larger displacement engine from Ford can make its way from the truck (or other) line with a weight savings, perhaps the Mustang will benefit from that in a similar fashion.

mach1fever

As much as I love my 06 the machs were very underated. I was running 314 to the wheels with intake, tune and x-pipe.

usmcrebel

the ony problem with it being done is the engineers @ Ford, they just seem to say lets make more HP and TQ, but wait while we're at it lets maek it weigh more too. i just dont understand why its so hard to keep weight down. all the useless electronics is the problem. why do we need power seats, why do we need a 6 disc changer (i have hands)? of course i do own a 1967 coupe that weighs less than an 86LX weighing in at 2800lbs. they only cost what $2500 then. I understand inflation and all that stuff, but i just dont see what is so hard about keeping weight down. iF i had the money and the time, i could take a GT of any year lose the pointless stuff and keeping luxury at the same time, and it would save weight and increase HP.

Knight

unfortunately ford has already proven this wrong with the 05. the 3v engine is much lighter then the 2v with its aluminum block adn lighter weight heads yet the car is 150lbs more then the 04.

I doubt the boss engine will be lighter then the 3v mod.

Vermillion06

The Corvette is in a different category than a Mustang altogether. The biggest difference is price. The engineering/technology put into a car that starts at ~$45K is going to be different than a car that starts at ~$19K.

The Corvette is GM's halo car. It gets the best engineering and technology that GM has. The closest thing to the Corvette that Ford had was the Ford GT.

The Mustang is some forms is a halo car, but it's also a budget $19K V6 coupe. The current Mustang chassis started out as a derivative of an existing chassis. Compromises have been made to sell it at a v6 price and get 140K units built a year. 34K Corvettes were built last year.

The Corvette is a relatively low volume halo car that costs nearly twice as much as a Mustang. The Mustang is a high volume regular production car. Of course the Corvette is going have better, more expensive engineering and technology built into it.

GTJOHN

With GDI technology, 4.6L or 5.0L should be sufficient. I don't see the need for a 5.8L.

Boomer

If its smaller and more fuel efficient with more potential and built like the 3.5 was.....

I do

rhumb

My point with the Vette is that both it and the Stang have, for a remarkably long 40 some years, inhabited their respective niches relatively unchanged in general parameters, i.e., form, material, function, relative performance, and relative price in the market. A glaring difference is, of course, weight.

Whereas the Vette has kept its trim high-school senior figure, the Stang has bloated with middle-aged weight. The Vette has kept at about the very low 3,000 range while maintaining roughly the same relative cost premium, percentage-wise, over the Stang.

The Stang meanwhile has larded up from perhaps 2,800lbs to about 3,400 -- a gain of over a quarter ton dead weight. Obviously that will have a terrible effect on aggragate performance, handling, braking and efficiency. And this isn't the first time the Stang has supersized itself, recall the '71-'73 version which became the Fat Elvis, neccessitating the crash diet resulting in the carry-the-badge Mustang II. The '79 FoxStang was a trim Mustang done right -- rather contemporary for the time -- but it has been a gradual diet of Big Macs and fries ever since.

Now, with the powerful but oh-so-plump GT500, the Stang has again taken on Marlon Brando'esque mass, all while costing as much a the lean and mean base Vette, which is about as fast in a straight line and will evicerate it in all other performance measures. Sure, you can obstensibly carry two tortured souls in the back seats of the Stang, but that seems like thin justification for over 3/4s a ton of road-hugging lard.

I imagine the '09-'10 Stang will be a rehash of the current chassis, ala the '99 Stang, so there's probably little opportunity to send this draft horse to the fat farm to regain its pony proportions. But hopefully the next real full redesign will pay more attention to the weight issue and realize that sometime, more is not neccessarily better.

usmcrebel

+1
now how would you solve the pudgy pony problem?

Tony Alonso

Again, I believe there is an inherent design constraint when you have a 2-seater vs. a 4-seater. Unless the Mustang changes to a 2-seater coupe, shrinks the back seat to the point that no one can sit there, or totally forgoes the back seat, there will always be a weight difference, given the price points at which they sell.

The day GM can make a $26,000 C6 Corvette with 400hp is the day I buy one.

In my opinion, the biggest weight loss plan for the current chassis is to reduce the size (take out wheelbase), lighten the engines (if bigger than a 5.0L V8, all aluminum will be a must), and leave out heavy options like a Shaker 1000 stereo. I predict to that would add cost into the V8 car that would push up even closer to the Corvette in price.

As others have mentioned here, it will be interesting to see what any new V8 engines can do for this part of the weight equation.

mach1fever

The other part is crash test standards. Things like mandatory airbags etc and mandated power to weight ratios effect this greatly.

Roger

usmcrebel

they have mandated ratios?....