Ford Windsor V8 (5.0 and 5.8)

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.