Ford Windsor V8 (5.0 and 5.8)
V8 · naturally aspirated · petrol · 1962–present
Also known as: windsor, windsor v8, 302, 351w, 5.0 windsor
Ford's small-block V8 — in the Mustang, F-150, Bronco, Crown Victoria, Town Car and the Mercury equivalents, from 1962 to 2002.
It is one of the most-documented engines in existence, and that is the practical point: forty years of production, enormous aftermarket support, and an answer already written for almost any question.
The 302 — sold as the 5.0 — is the one most people mean, and the 351W its larger relative. They are not interchangeable despite the shared architecture: the deck height differs, so the manifolds, the pushrods and much else do not swap.
Its recurring faults are age. The timing chain stretches and retards the timing gradually enough that owners do not notice; the oil pump driveshaft is a known weak point on modified engines; and on the fuel-injected later ones the mass airflow sensor and the idle air control account for most driveability complaints before anything mechanical does.
A 302 with a lumpy idle and no fault code is very often a vacuum leak — these engines have a great many hoses and forty years of heat behind them.
This page answers for both sizes, which is why the cars listed below run 5.0 and 5.8 litres — the 302 and the 351W. They share an architecture and not a deck height, as above, so the range in that list is the whole reason to establish which one a car has before buying anything for it.
Cars fitted with this engine
14 generations, across 3 makes. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Ford
- Mustang Fox 1979–1993
- F-250 Super Duty Seventh generation 1980–1986
- Bronco Third and fourth generation 1980–1991
- F-250 Super Duty Pre-Super Duty 1987–1998
- F-150 Eighth generation 1987–1991
- Bronco Fifth generation 1992–1996
- F-150 Ninth generation 1992–1996
- Mustang SN-95 1993–2004
- Explorer Second generation 1994–2003
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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