Hemmings Makes Mistakes!

Was in Barnes & Noble recently and saw this issue of Hemmings and decided I needed to read it - for obvious reasons.



And then I found the statements on the left and the prices on the right.  I didn't buy the magazine.

So, do you see what I see?  How 'bout the pricing?  How many years out of date is it?    

The pricing seems old, but the thing that sounded odd at first was the EEC in 84 with fuel injection in 85.

But I’d forgotten that the carbs were EEC controlled.

Yes, but the 351 HO was a 4 barrel Holley 4180 like the 460 and was built through 1987 on the pickups. Interesting was the use of an Aluminum intake manifold.

The 351 H.O. never did have EEC controls did it? I think they meant to say 5.0 instead of H.O.?...

And I didn't think that the 351 H.O. had 60 more HP? I didn't think the jump was that big.

On the prices, here's Hagerty's evaluation of a 1986 Bronco XLT Lariat with a 351 HO.  A #3 vehicle is supposedly worth a bit north of $17,500, and even a #1 is worth around $9000.  And while those prices may be a little bit higher than what we've been seeing, and Hagerty would want to inflate the prices some to get you to insure your vehicle to the hilt, they are much closer to reality than the Hemmings prices.



As for the engine, the HO didn't have any EEC.  It had DS-II, just like the 7.5L.

But the HP is correct as the HP had 210 and the 2V had 150 in the F150, LD F250, or Bronco.  But the F250HD or F350 had 165 HP.  These are specs from the 1984 Dealers book on our site.

Rembrant wrote

The 351 H.O. never did have EEC controls did it? I think they meant to say 5.0 instead of H.O.?...

And I didn't think that the 351 H.O. had 60 more HP? I didn't think the jump was that big.

That's right; the 5.8L 4V H.O. was never controlled by EEC.  That engine was used until the 1987 model year.

The standard 5.8L (2V) came with EEC-IV in 1984.

The 4.9L 300 also came with EEC-IV in 1984.

The 5.0L (2V) came with EEC in early 1985, right before it was replaced with EFI in mid 1985.

Unless you have a California truck… then you get all the emissions things.

My '84 302 has EEC-IV with TFI

Just to confuse things further, Poncho Loco is a 1982 TX truck but had the infernal little box under the driver seat, wires all over God's grey earth, EGR, and some kind of fancy anti-smog carb on it. Is that EEC-IV?

It's all gone now. Lost in a boating accident, along with my guns.

What's TFI, btw?

Poncho Loco had EEC-III.  Very common in '82.  The '82 I called Brownie had that, as did the '82 Explorer.

TFI is Thick Film Integration, a technology Ford glommed onto for the ignition module.  It was attached to the distributor in one of their Better Ideas - until they discovered that engine heat was killing them and they moved them to the fender.  Read up on it on the page at Ford TFI Module National Class Settlement.  A couple of extracts from that are:

On December 9, 2002, after five years of litigation, a settlement was reached in a national class action in California, Howard v. Ford Motor Co., that reimbursed owners for ignition module failures that occurred within the first 100,000 miles, and extended the warranty to 100,000 miles for any vehicle still under this mileage.

Twenty-two million Ford vehicles made from 1983 through 1995 have defective ignition modules that may cause the vehicle to stall and die on the highway at any time. Failure at highway speeds can cause the driver to lose control or even result in a stalled vehicle being hit by a truck. Some models had failure rates as high as 90%. According to Ford, two-thirds of the failures were of the "die on the road" type.

The models affected have ignition modules mounted on the distributor and are listed below. When its temperature goes above 257 degrees Fahrenheit, the module is likely to cut out and cause the vehicle to die on the road. When the vehicle cools down, it can be restarted and will run until it again exceeds the design temperature. This is a hard problem to diagnose because by the time the vehicle gets towed to the dealer or sits in the shop waiting for repair, it has cooled down and no cause can be found for the stalling.

During the 1980’s, NHTSA conducted five investigations into stalling in Ford vehicles. During those investigations, Ford withheld documents from NHTSA that would have shown a common cause of stalling — failure of the Thick Film Ignition (TFI) module mounted on the distributor when its temperature rises above 125 C and cuts out, causing the vehicle to stall on the highway. There are over 10 million vehicles still on American roads today that suffer from the same readily-correctable design defect that can cause the engine to stop abruptly and unexpectedly, at any time and at any speed, leaving the driver without power-assisted steering or brakes and the vehicle disabled. Vehicles with the distributor mounted TFI module have a 9% higher fatal crash rate than those with a different module system.