Poncho Loco build thread, yes here it is ...

Mystery ECM in a carburetor truck?

My daughter rolled up her sleeves, done with HS now, and insisted that I pull Pancho Loco up to the work area with the tractor. Then she stripped the interior out of her new truck. Brothers helped. Pancho Loco has a carb on his 351, a nice new one.  

But we found this box under the driver seat when we stripped the interior.  i searched on the E2VF number and got a fleabay hit for "1982 Ford Pickup truck ECM 4X4 A/T F150 V8 351W E2VF-12A649"

We thought Poncho was a 1984. But even if he's an 82, did Ford even do EFI before the Bricknose?

Looking up the number in the Parts & Illustration guide the 12A649 comes back as a (Engine Electronic Control) Calibration Assembly.

The number on the bottom the 12A650 which I cant make out the prefix or the suffix to search more in depth, it how ever comes back as a Processor Assy. (Engine Electronic Control) - EEC III.

For a 351W it appears there is only one listing, 81/83 E-F-U100/250 w/California Emissions.  Part Number E2PZ-12A650-B.  The same 12A650 was used on 302s as well from 81/82 with California Emissions.

Looks like your truck is a California truck.

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. Our first Bullnose is also a Cali truck. Not much rust there, that's a plus.

I have a feeling all that EGR stuff might just fall off. Or it's already gone. No need for that in Texas. Again that varies by county, as we discovered with bonded title costs.

RenoHuskerDu wrote

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. Our first Bullnose is also a Cali truck. Not much rust there, that's a plus.

I have a feeling all that EGR stuff might just fall off. Or it's already gone. No need for that in Texas. Again that varies by county, as we discovered with bonded title costs.

Yep in Texas anything over 25 years old is safety only.

The emission systems has to visually be there at the time of inspection but we are talking about a vehicle that is over 25 years old where your average inspector is under 25 years old which means they wouldnt know what should or shouldnt be under the hood.

Many inspectors dont even care about the whole has to be there aspect.  I know when I was a state inspector for nearly 7 years I didnt care about emission systems on what the state defines as a classic.

For my truck, its an '82 that was sold in Texas new and the emission systems it does have has already for the most part been removed outside of EGR and the air pump.  But the converter was cut off years ago.  With my new engine build, EGR is going, the air pump is going, and the distributor is going to be sent out to be recurved to the new engine specs.  Only emission systems I plan on keeping is the PCV system and the EVAP system if the sniper stealth can handle operating with a EVAP system that purges the canister off idle.

I had an '82 351W w/an ECU under the seat just like that.  And it was a 49-state truck, made in KC and sold in Kansas.

You can follow those wires and strip the whole ECU harness out.  It is standalone from the rest of the truck, and obviously you don't need it with the new setup.  But make sure you have a DS-II ignition system as the trucks with an ECU didn't.

What you have is the infamous EEC-III system. It would have originally had a Motorcraft 7200 VV feedback carburetor. If everything is reasonably intact, I would carefully remove it and put it aside as I am sure there are some people in strict emission enforcement areas who might need part or all of the system.

85lebaront2 wrote

What you have is the infamous EEC-III system. It would have originally had a Motorcraft 7200 VV feedback carburetor. If everything is reasonably intact, I would carefully remove it and put it aside as I am sure there are some people in strict emission enforcement areas who might need part or all of the system.

Thank you sir, in a safe storage area it will go.

We dug thru papers inside and found reg back to 1992 with local owners. I suspect it's a Texas truck. Always dig in the glove box, is one of my mottos. I once bought an 04 SD with the cab off, mechanic quit, got a great deal but needed info from the owner. Found loan docs, called his old bank and county clerk, located the man.

The seat mounts are in excellent shape, no rust. My daughter is soaking the seat belts in detergent water now. They had otherworldly levels of grime ground into them, under the back bench. Somebody Line-X'd the inside of the cab, we found. Nice.

So, it's a 351, but not an H.O. model.

Does it have a 4V carb on it now?

Does it have a vacuum advance distributor and blue grommet dDiraSpark ignition module on the driver's inner fender?

If it still has the EEC distributor the timing is locked in limp home mode.

I don't know why I thought it had a new carb. Musta been another parts truck we looked at.

It's no wonder the PO burnt up a starter and gave up on the truck. Just look at that Rube Goldberg. It's a hideous monstrosity with wires and solenoids on it. Fortunately Texas cares naught for smog stuff if the vehicle is over 25 years old. I'm putting it all in a storage box and building a typical V8 runner like I did as a teen.

I called a local shop that restomods pickups and when I asked which carb they recommend he replied Holley fuel injection.  I know that it works great but it's gotta be expensive.  Have any of y'all had good luck with aftermarket carbs or plugNplay EFI?

That's why I asked what carb or manifold.

If you want to keep the 2V intake I'd go with a 2150.
They are stone simple and very reliable.

If you want to swap intakes just about any 600 CFM vacuum secondary carb will work.
Ask the hot rod shop if they have any takeoffs from cars they've slapped injection onto????  😉

I imagine this means you're doing a total DSII swap or throwing an HEI dizzy on it too....

And you're going to have to eliminate EGR, because as you can see that's controlled by a computer activated solenoid as well.

Maybe someone on Marketplace or at a swap meet has an intake/carb combo?

RenoHuskerDu wrote

  Have any of y'all had good luck with aftermarket carbs or plugNplay EFI?

I got a Holley 4160 and a Weiand intake for my 351w, it runs great. Here is the carb:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/hly-0-80457sa

But I see that Summit no longer carries it. I'm sure they could suggest a substitute. I have an automatic so I needed the kick-down lever, that made this carb ideal for me. If you have a manual, then that's not needed, of course.

I had to look at this a few different times to make sure of what I was seeing!

I saw the Holley float bowl up front and thought it was a v4 carb but it is not it's a v2 carb Holley 2300.
It is half of a v4 carb and takes the same parts to rebuild it and I think they run 100% better than the Motorcraft 2100 carbs that you cant get jets easly for.

The Holley 2300 comes in a 350 & 500 cfm sizes.
350 is good on a 6cly the 500 on small v8's up to I would say 360 cid.
I got a 500 on a AMC 304 and it ran great when I had the car on the road.
I have used the 350 on a Toytoa 238 straight six and also ran great.
Son has a 500 on a Jeep 258 and is a little to large.

I would pull that carb apart and if the insides and not eaten up from bad gas I would get a rebuild kit for that carb and rebuilt it and run it.
Dave ----

ArdWrknTrk wrote

I imagine this means you're doing a total DSII swap or throwing an HEI dizzy on it too....

And you're going to have to eliminate EGR, because as you can see that's controlled by a computer activated solenoid as well.

Maybe someone on Marketplace or at a swap meet has an intake/carb combo?

If you look at 1 of the pictures I think I see the plug part (blue) of a HEI dist.

He could then just unplug the EGR and remove the wiring & computer as I dont see anything else that it runs.
Dave ----

Look at that, Dave!
.... yeah, sorry I don't see much on my phone unless I zoom in.

Rusty posted a good diagram of the harness, showing everything from the crank sensor to the O2 sensor to the TAB & MAP sensors that sit behind the battery.

I guess the carb is from another truck?  
I don't see the TPS or funky VV bowl shown in that drawing.

I don't think you'd want to rebuild a computer controlled carb to run without any of that....

RenoHuskerDu wrote

I don't know why I thought it had a new carb. Musta been another parts truck we looked at.

It's no wonder the PO burnt up a starter and gave up on the truck. Just look at that Rube Goldberg. It's a hideous monstrosity with wires and solenoids on it. Fortunately Texas cares naught for smog stuff if the vehicle is over 25 years old. I'm putting it all in a storage box and building a typical V8 runner like I did as a teen.

I called a local shop that restomods pickups and when I asked which carb they recommend he replied Holley fuel injection.  I know that it works great but it's gotta be expensive.  Have any of y'all had good luck with aftermarket carbs or plugNplay EFI?

That looks like a replacement holley 2V for the factory autolite carb.

On the aftermarket EFI, at work I have installed 4 Fi-Tech and 8 or 9 Snipers.  We stopped installing the Fi-Tech units for two reasons.  One reason is you will have to call Fi-Tech to get help on doing the final tuning to get it to work right.  Every one we've installed had issues with being hard to start as it floods out on the cold start or they had problems with being lazy on the throttle.  This normally wouldnt be an issue but sitting on hold to be helped via Fi-Tech support results in sitting on hold for a good 2 or 3 hours.  Second reason is every one we've installed had issues.  Primary issue we saw was injectors hanging wide open dumping raw fuel into the engine stalling it out.  One a foxbody mustang that was previously gutted of factory EFI systems long ago, it didnt even leave the shop before one of the injectors hung wide open, and it wasnt due to trash in the fuel system.  We will not install a sniper without replacing the fuel tank to prevent this issue.  On the mustang like all snipers we install, it had new fuel tank all new fuel hoses and a brand new EFI rated inline filter.

On the snipers I only had one come back and it wasnt because of a issue with the sniper, it was because the owner of the '66 Corvette was blaming the sniper for his over heating issue.  Mind you this guy bought this car and the previous owner towed it to us to do all this work before the buy was finalized.  The guy never drove the car before hand and we didnt drive it a whole lot just to make sure the sniper was functional and the vintage air was functional.  He seemed to think the sniper was running lean causing a over heat issue as per his brother in law who is a race engine builder.  We didnt believe it was a cause of the sniper as the previous owner had installed an electric fan to supplement the mechanical fan an obvious sign he was fighting over heating with the carb.  The sniper also showed up a decently rich air/fuel ratio of 13:1.  But all the other snipers that I installed the people were quite happy with them.  There are some issues but I havent had one of them come back with these issues I see on the Snipers Owners Group but they say the connectors for the injectors are reduced in size and dont latch very well like OE connectors.  They used these reduced size connectors so they can hide it in the fuel bowl like covers to give the look of a carb.  If you do go sniper how ever, I strongly recommend you follow the instructions to the letter, just about everyone online that has problems with their snipers is cause they didnt follow the instructions.  Another thing is I strongly suggest you get it tuned by someone like Adam at Mad Science Motorsports, he used to be on the north east side of Houston but hes not more centrally located between austin, dallas, and houston.  He also does remote tuning and comes highly recommended by not just holley but by other owners of snipers as well.

I actually bought the Holley Sniper 4150 Stealth, it looks just like a 4150 carb but that wasnt why I picked this one out.  I went with this one as it has the ford kick down linkage built in.  The other requires converting the OE kick down rod to a cable and fine tuning adjustment which I did not want to get involved with.  This is a 800 cfm 4V system that is supposed to be out of the box capable of supporting 600hp.  I picked mine up from jegs for $1,149.95 by making use of their discount of $50 off orders of $1,000 or more.  This how ever is not the complete kit, the complete kit comes with fuel hose and a inline pump you mount on the frame.  I am going to run metal 3/8" hardline on the frame and use very minimal hose and will be mounting the fuel pump in the tank via a 85/86 fuel tank and sending unit combo.


Now unless you plan on pulling the intake and switching over to a 4V intake you would have to go with something like the Holley 2300 like below which is a 2V version and you can pick it up for $900 in non kit form.  We dont use the kits as the frame mounted fuel pumps not only make a bunch of noise but they also dont last long as they eventually over heat and burn up without the fuel absorbing the heat of the pump with in the fuel tank.


I am actually looking at throwing the sniper 2300 on my V6 El Camino as I am tired of messing with the dual junk carb with this ethanol blended fuels we use today.  Its also a big reason why I am going with sniper on my truck as well to try and get away from issues that ethanol blended fuels pose to carbs in the long run.

Have you considered a Holley 2300/4412?
Or one of the 2100-2150 knockoffs that you can get for $100 outright?

Now that Dave has pointed out the HEI it seems that would be the expedient solution.

12A650 is the processor, 12A649 is the calibrator for the processor. Feedback systems used these numbers beginning in 1977. 12A649 went away in about 1983 with the introduction of EEC-IV.

As Gary pointed out, on the early EEC trucks the harness was a stand alone. My '81 F100 was a California truck - all of those parts fell off of it (must've happened on the trailer while hauling it home!). Everything was carefully boxed and shipped to a board member unfortunate enough to have to comply with California emission laws... The good news is that since it was a stand alone, the connectors are on your truck harness to plug in a DS-II box and you're good to go!

Yes, it has HEI. Bright spot in the story.

FuzzFace2 wrote

[SNIP]

The Holley 2300 comes in a 350 & 500 cfm sizes.
350 is good on a 6cly the 500 on small v8's up to I would say 360 cid.
I got a 500 on a AMC 304 and it ran great when I had the car on the road.
I have used the 350 on a Toytoa 238 straight six and also ran great.
Son has a 500 on a Jeep 258 and is a little to large.

I would pull that carb apart and if the insides and not eaten up from bad gas I would get a rebuild kit for that carb and rebuilt it and run it.
Dave ----

After catching up on this thread, and seeing the junk out on fleabay I like the idea of rebuilding this one. I didn't know it was a Holley.  But ... what about all the useless emissions junk on it?  We have no more sniff inspections in Texas at this vehicle age, only rudimentary visual that something that looks like a catalyst is in the exhaust. One of my sons is an official tester and knows all about requirements. Sooooo, all that crapola would have to go, or I would not sleep well at night.

Might just be simpler to buy a Holley 2300 on fleabay without all the Furd emissions stuff.  Oooops, just looked at the prices. Gulp. Three kids to support still.

When I search for 2300 carb in fleabay I get hits for the 2100 at reasonable prices but only 300cfm. It has an electric choke, so we wouldn't have to add a cable. Would the 2100 also fit in there and match the linkages?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/182764333254?epid=2242363319&hash=item2a8d9a68c6:g:MAMAAOSwN41fMm0T

300cfm seems small for a 351, but Poncho Loco is for a teen girl so power demands are modest. She's also a fireman with my vfd but drives carefully. Chief has been very direct with us about speeding on the way to the station. NO.