Most Ford people know of Rick Anderson for his prowess in tuning supercharged 5.0 Mustangs. He quickly moved from hopping up carbureted Mustangs to tweaking the electronics on EFI'd 5.0s. He is also the pioneer behind a handful of unique products for supercharged 5.0s, most notably the mandrel-bent supercharger inlet pipe he trademarked as the Power Pipe.
With all this Mustang experience behind him, you might wonder why we're discussing Anderson in the text surrounding a '98 F-150. The reason is twofold: Trucks are a huge market and Anderson wanted to see what it would take to come up with a reliable performance package for the popular Ford truck. Also, showing his foresight of the Mustang performance market, he wanted to see what the larger 5.4L modular engine was worth.
Since Anderson Ford Motorsport is only a small part of the Anderson Ford-Mercury Dealership, all Anderson had to do was get a truck off the lot and start playing. After strapping the big red truck to his trusty Dynojet chassis dyno, he soon found the standard 5.4 F-150 packed the same punch as the old 5.8 Lightning. "At the rear wheels, the Lightning has basically 190 to 195 horses. That's exactly what this one had. That was impressive to begin with."
Before getting crazy with performance, Anderson had to lower the truck and ditch the stock wheels. He added the Ford Motorsport lowering kit, to drop the truck 2 inches in front and 4 inches in back, then went for 17-inch Weld wheels wrapped with BFGoodrich rubber. He tested every modification with a Vericom, the Dynojet, the drag strip, or some combination thereof. He reports the truck was actually a bit quicker with the new rubber.
It also 60-footed better with the Bassani after-cat exhaust he added. While the truck proved quicker on the Vericom, to the tune of .350 second, it didn't show huge gains on the Dynojet, as the truck's automatic transmission mandated he make dyno pulls from above 3,000 rpm. Uncharacteristically, the free-breathing exhaust seems to most help low-rpm power.
With the truck looking good and sounding good, it was time for Anderson to play with is favorite bolt-on, the Vortech supercharger. Of course he couldn't just bolt the kit on and leave stock well enough alone. With the standard kit and its 3.33-inch pulley, the Vortech puffed out 6 pounds of boost, but Anderson wanted more. He swapped on a 3.13-inch pulley and came up with 9 pounds of boost, which is reflected by the supercharged columns in the "Dyno Results" sidebar. These are compared to the naturally aspirated horsepower output courtesy of the stock 5.4 with the Bassani exhaust.
What Anderson discovered, by hooking up a Next Generation STAR (NGS) tester to the truck's EEC-V test port, was the computer was pulling out gobs of timing in response to the boost. So, rather than getting fancy, he tried adding more boost with the 3.13 pulley. Then he figured he'd go yet another step further.
Well, the next step was big, as Vortech didn't have a pulley diameter between the 3.13 and the diminutive 2.65. So, Anderson bolted on the 2.65 pulley and the boost spiked to 11, 12, and sometimes 13 pounds because the belt slipped.
You'd think more boost would mean more power, and it did. The truck spun up a peak output of 299 rear-wheel horses, but all was not well. "On the dyno it did a whole bunch of funny things. Peak was incredible, but it hurt so much at the bottom of the gear because it was jerking so much timing out, it actually made it slower on the Vericom," he explains.
Due to some updated EEC-IV software, Anderson was unable to play with a custom computer chip, which might be able to make the 2.65 pulley effective. Instead, he went back to the 3.13 pulley and headed to the drag strip. There he learned temperature is critical to the 5.4's performance. "...This thing is just like the old Mustangs. Off the road onto the drag strip it runs 15-flat to 14.90 at 80 mph. If you let it sit for an hour, without putting an ice bag on it, it runs 14.77 at 91.29, and a 14.78 at 91.40. If you put an ice bag (and a fan) on it, it runs 14.54 and 14.60 at 92.90 miles an hour," he enthuses. "The motor would just barely be at 'Warm' on the gauge and it loved it."
Anderson believes the EEC-V is heavily reliant on all its sensors and that the cooler engine temperature data caused the computer to dial in more timing, which naturally improved the truck's performance. This what-it-takes knowledge is exactly what he wanted out of the project.
"...Learning that it pulls timing out by itself, that's pretty bulletproof. It's going to be hard for somebody to tear up one of these vehicles with the blower on it."
Not only is the package durable, it's happy. "We didn't change the fuel mileage of the truck, the driveability, or anything. We just made it a blast to drive," Anderson raves. "In fact, my wife had to drive it the other day. She came back and practically wanted to keep it."
Now that the project is done, someone else is going to keep this super truck. It's for sale, as are all the parts to make yours super too.