Alright, I've searched and I've searched but I havn't found a real answer to this. I have an 88 Cougar Special Edition, right now its a v6. I want to swap a 5.0 in it but I've got one last question. Will the 5.0 harness out of an 86 work in my car? I know that 87-88 should work just fine but I know were I can get an 86 harness.
Also, the connectors on the drivers side of the firewall, I'm thinking those are only differn't between cluster options. My car has the base cluster and so does the 86 soooo it should just plug in.
No i don't think it will as 86s should have been CFI not SEFI like the 5.0 you want to install.
Also the harnesses sould look the same for the dash connectors but the wiring colors will probably not match up,tou will have to repin the connectors to match up.
Had to do it on my 87 TC and it worked fine, should be similar for you.
The connectors were changed in '88. They are even different from '87.Found that out the hard way. '86 were sefi on the 5.0. Not saying you couldn't use it, but would take alot of work. :)
Wrong answer..... '86 was the first year of the SEFI 5.0
I'm thinking it should work, I really doubt there is much if any real difference between the '86 and the '87-'88 5.0 harnesses(I had a '86 5.0 Bird but never did a direct compairson).. I'd check to see if the the plugs are the same(check size, color of wire etc)..
I may go to the junkyard tommorow and take a look and see if there close.
Well after my junkyard jaunt today I found out a little info. Well very little info. The plugs on the left hand side of the car are in differn't spots on the 5.0 and 3.8. The 5.0 has them on the front of the shock tower and the 3.8 has them on the rear. Looks like there should be enough slack to make up for it though.