I came across a 1982 Ford Fairmont wagon with a 5.0 fuel injected engine and five speed trans. I spoke with the seller and he informed me that the car "runs" and will drive but the last owner put the wrong cam (two different firing orders?) in the engine and two of the fuel injectors are firing at the wrong time. The sell say's this can be fixed by rewiring the two injectors or by updating the Quarter horse chip? I have very little experience with these engine or aftermarket support controllers.
Could it be just that easy or am I looking at a rabbit hole?
Kind of a long
roof
Thanks, Paul B
Put a Ford Motorsports B302 cam in it and have fun. That cam was developed by Ford SVT specifically for that engine.
If it's an older 302 cam be careful with the distributor drive gear. Newer cams are not compatible with older distributor drive gears. IIRC 5.0 cams are steel and require a bronze cam drive gear.
IIRC, the non-H.O. 5.0 and H.O. 5.0 has different firing orders. The H.O. has the same firing order as the 351W. If the car was a V8 car originally, I'm pretty sure it came stock with a non-H.O. 5.0. The engine in the pics looks to be the later H.O. variant. I believe the cutoff year was 1986.
I'll also echo what mblommel said. Flat tappet vs roller cam needs different distributor gears.
There is a ton of info on the 'net about these engines.
Sweet wagon BTW 
On the cams and dist. drive gears. If a roller cam is present use a steel gear. If a flat tappet cam then cast iron or bronze gear. A bronze gear can be used with a roller cam but it will wear faster then the steel gear. There are millions of the steel geared dist. out there so why use bronze?
Only the HO engines used sequential firing injectors, all the others used batch fire. Make sure that it's not batch fire before you start rewiring the injectors.
Not good...
Only about 45 miles from me...
Rodan
Reader
6/24/17 7:58 p.m.
noddaz wrote:
Not good...
Only about 45 miles from me...
I'd be in real trouble if this wasn't on the other side of the country! 
Easiest solution would probably be to swap the cam. That would also provide an opportunity to take a look around while you're in there and assess what you've got.
E303, or Comp XE270HR would also help. The comp is a split-duration cam that will help with the miserable exhaust port. It works. Trust me.
You'll definitely want to swap to the "right" cam, though. You have to change a fair amount of stuff to put the "wrong" cam in right. I'm sure the distributor gear on the TFI distributor is eating the cam alive.
Cool wagon! Not sure if you own it yet or not. I have an '80 Fairmont Wagon that will get the 5.0 treatment eventually.
My first 5.0 project went temporarily awry when I wired the HO engine with the non-HO firing order. (Just spark plug wires, mind you. Mine was carbureted.) As mentioned, the 5.0 HO and the 5.8 share the same firing order. The older 302s had a different firing order.
If you have this or get this...you'll have to let us know what you find out.
Looking at the motor and the list of upgrades I would put a new cam on the back of the todo list. I would not be surprised if it had a decent cam in it as it sits.
That would be a really cool project!!!!
I will take a look at the car Monday on the way home and go from there.
Thanks for all the input.
Paul B
