Everyone's dancing around the issue here. Ford never built a 50 oz cranked 5.0 with a 157 tooth flexplate, i.e, they never put a C-4 behind a 50 oz 5.0. So don't waste your time trying to find a stock 50 oz 157 tooth flexplate, these are an aftermarket only item. B&M and the other transmission vendors sell these flexplates. You will also need to swap the oilpans between the motors and either swap the timing cover to an older style with a dipstick tube in the cover, or drill the 5.0's timing cover and install a dipstick tube in it. The hole in the engine block for the 5.0's tube will need to be plugged. There's quite a bit of work involved here to put a newer engine in an older car, but it's well worth the effort. When you swap the flexplates, you will need to use thread sealer on the flexplate bolts to avoid oil seepage past the threads. The intake swap is pretty straightforward, and they've already mentioned the steel geared distributor to match the roller cam. You will also need to decide on which FEAD (Front End Accessory Drive) you want to use, virtually nothing is interchangeable in this besides the balancer. If you keep the older setup, I would suggest finding a timing cover from an 80-up Crown Vic to use, the 80-up covers have locating dowels to center the front seal with the balancer, the eariler covers do not, so you must either use a tool to perform this, or leave the cover bolts loose while you install the balancer and hope it centers the seal on it's own before tightening the bolts.
Ford made the switch to the 50 oz crank in 1981, then the 1 pc rear seal in the 5.0 in 1982. As such, there were no 1 pc rear seal, 28 oz crank 5.0's. That is essentially what Krazy Comet was saying when you shot him down.
The gears are different, older non roller cam engines use bronze gears, and the newer 5.0 roller cam engines use steel gears. If you want to run the stock duraspark just go to your local parts store and get a distributor for a 1985 Mustang GT 5 speed. I recently put a newer 5.0 into my Maverick out of a 98 Explorer so if there are any questions I can help you with just let me know. :Handshake
The non roller cammed engines had an iron cam gear on the distributor. Never seen a bronze gear from Ford.
Me neither, std flat tappet iron cams use a iron gear, & the steel rollers use a steel gear, bronze gears are aftermarket... I don't much like the bronze gears as they tend to wear in 25K mi or so, problem is compounded when using a high volume/pressure oil pump...
I feel sorry for the guy who started out confused and ended up more confused after reading this thread. If he wasnt sure what to do before then its hard to tell what is sarcasm, what is wrong, and what info is right. maybe half these posts could be deleted and leave the correct info. The OP is local to me and Ive done his same swap so I offered my phone number to call me and get this straight with him.
