'90 Chevy 454 SS vs '94 Ford Lightning F150 MuscleTrux Wars Part 1

Today, we're kicking off our own new Muscle truck series and we're starting with the oldest grudge match in the book Ford versus Chevy. We're dyno in

Kevin's Lightning and Ryan's 454

then taking them out for a test drive to see just what each guys got to work with before we get these two rivals in a head to head. Shoot out. It's all today here on trucks.

Hey, welcome to the shop. Well, today on trucks, we get to start muscle truck wars over here. We've got a 1994 54 Ss over here. We've got a 1994 Ford Lightning. So we're gonna take these two trucks, build them up, put them up against each other and see which one comes out on top.

Now, both of these trucks are roughly the same size and weight, but they're not necessarily on equal ground. Now, the super sport that I'm taking on is a big

block. Kevin's Lightning, a small block both putting out about the same horsepower from the factory, but each one's potential comes from different places. So we're going to take advantage of those differences, but set a similar power goal of somewhere north of 400 horse for both trucks if we get a little bit better than that. Well, that's good too. We're also going to make these trucks handle a little bit better. Throw some custom tweaks at them as well. But before we start turning wrenches, we're going to take a look back and see how these trucks came about in the first place.

The whole sport truck idea was first brought to market with Dodges Little Red Express in 1978 which featured a 360 cubic inch V8 modified tranny and high stall speed converter hooked up to a limited slip rear end

and a cool looking appearance package that included chrome exhaust stacks coming straight up from the side steps.

The Little Red Express was the fastest American production vehicle from 0 to 100

MPH in 1978.

And although production was limited, it started a movement that is still strong today.

And by the time the 454 Ss truck rolled off the line in 1990 Supersport vehicles had long since earned a reputation with the legendary big block Chevelles and El Caminos.

The 1990 version like mine was rated at 230 horses, but torque was right in line with the big block with a stump pulling 385 ft pounds beefed up suspension. And the last year of the turbo 403 speed transmission hooked to a massive 14 volt limited slip rear axle with 373 gears.

The only chrome on the whole truck was the wheels. And if you ask me,

the monochromatic black look was just plain me.

Now, the lightning debuted in 1993 with its sole purpose being to knock the 454 Ss off the block. Give it some real competition and maybe kick a few cyclones to the curb along the way.

Now, like the 454 Ss, the lightning wasn't just an appearance package. The chassis had been stiffen, the whole truck was lowered and sway bar diameter was increased to set it aside from the regular F 150 in the handling department

racing legend, Jackie Stewart was even brought on to help fine tune the lightning's handling

17 inch aluminum wheels, the E 40 D overdrive transmission,

a lightweight aluminum drive shaft and a similar single color appearance package gave these trucks all the earmarks of the sixties muscle cars with their fleet colors and no nonsense attitude.

Now, this 94 is one of only 1100 red Lightnings built that year, but they're still surprisingly affordable, which is kind of a well kept secret, but maybe not for long.

And there was more than 13,000 of these 450 fours produced in 1990 with a total of nearly 17,000 built during a 90 to 93 production run. So these trucks are a little easier to come by. Which good news for you guys if you're trying to get your hands on one. Yeah.

And we wanted to get our hands on two decent trucks. Both as close to stock as possible. Not the best truck, not the worst truck. Just a decent representation of what's out there and available on the market. And today we're going to see what these trucks bring to the table. But although they look nice, Ryan's trucks got almost 140,000 miles on it and my lightning has got almost 90,000 miles on it. So the chances are they're not in the best tune.

The engine seems to run ok. The transmission shifts in and out of all the gears with no obvious issues, but underneath it looks like the rear main seal has been leaking

and eighties vintage aluminum wheels and co op tires, let you know that the original rolling stock is long gone.

The paint job is recent and decent, but it's no show truck and the windshield has seen better days inside the seats are in ok condition,

the mileage, but the original center console is missing. So we'll have to do some digging to try to find one. But all in all the truck appears to be a solid platform for us to build on.

Now, the lightning had a recent paint as well, but it's not perfect. As a matter of fact, they've even painted over a couple of dents. Now, there's some obvious signs of a prior collision repair as well. Check out these bolts that hold the fender to the header panel. See this primer that tells you that these bolts have been adjusted and that's ok. There's nothing wrong with that. All that tells us is that this truck is no Cream Puff trailer queen and that the prior owner was not afraid to drive it.

Now, I know

it's a little bit cleaner than Ryan's truck, but somebody's thrown a set of chrome valve covers on and obviously done an ignition upgrade. The truck runs pretty good and it shifts good. So there's no real surprises here.

But now under the truck, somebody has hacked up the exhaust system and removed the catalytic converters. Now, there's no way this is going to pass a visual inspection, let alone a tailpipe inspection. So we'll have to take care of this later on.

Now, obviously, we've got our work cut out for us to make these trucks competitive and reliable. But before we go any further, we want to see how these trucks compare in stock trim and there's no better test for that than the head to head dyno Pole. So we've got a little bit of routine maintenance to do to make sure both trucks are running right and then we'll see how much more power the Ford makes than the Chevy. You might start out making more power, it's all said and done. With,

I'm winning

up next. Ryan's 454 Ss gets the once over before heading to the

dyno to see what kind of numbers it'll make. And later it's Kevin's turn to clean up under the hood before he straps his light into the rollers.

Hey, welcome back to trucks. Today. We're kicking off a series of shows. We're gonna call Muscle truck wars and we're gonna start by pitting these two high performance factory sport trucks against each other. But before we do any upgrades or add any power, we're gonna baseline each truck over at Joe and Mike's chassis, dyno,

which is a great way to establish a starting

and measure improvements,

but just throwing a truck up on the rollers, it's a little reckless. That's right because you want your basic systems like fuel ignition and cooling to be functioning properly so that you not only get an accurate baseline, but you don't damage your truck under wide open throttle.

So we're going to be doing a little checklist on each truck starting with a 454.

We surfed online and found the website of

dyno speed racing in Memphis, Tennessee and borrowed parts of their 32 point pre dyno

checklist along with using basic common sense to make sure each truck showed his true colors.

Now that right there is exactly why we wanted to replace the old spark plugs.

We're gonna go back with an OE plug gap to 35,000 which is the factory spec and at least we know our ignition will be firing strong.

The

fact that electronic ignition on these trucks was great for a stock engine but power can be lost with weak signals. So a stock replacement rotor cap and wires from o'reilly auto parts got thrown back on.

How's the cooling?

Not real pretty, but it'll, it'll do for now.

The radiator hoses all look good and the tanks didn't leak. So we rolled with the crappy looking coolant for now,

but it's not a bad idea to flush the system before any serious upgrades. Especially with a high mileage engine

with the truck up on our lift, we can take a closer look at the drive line.

So with the engine oil draining, we replaced the fuel filter since a clogged filter can rob power and lean the system out and checked and topped off the rear diff lube.

All the U joints seem tight and there were no serious red flags around the opinion seals or rear transmission housing.

It was in good shape.

All right. Now that we know nothing's going to fall off and everything's back close to stock. I'll fill this thing up with some oil and we'll take it over to horsepower. See what kind of numbers we get at the wheels

over at the horsepower shop. Mike Galley helped us lock the truck down

and once we had the big block warmed up to operating temperature, Ryan made a full throttle pole.

What we end up with that

1 96.2 and 2 90.9.

That's not too bad. That's better than I thought it would do. What it's rated at

could be better, but it could be worse.

What do we end up with

sampling? Of five? 1 95 2, 99. Pretty consistent go.

Let's make one more. Run

it, run six. They got 194 horse and 300 ft pounds of torque. Cool. So they're within a few horsepower and a few foot pounds of torque.

That's not too bad. That's not bad at all. Consider 140,000 miles on it. Yeah. Really? Plus the parasitic loss from the transmission and everything else. So we're right about at stock rating

when we come back, we'll see what the small block Ford's got for the big block. Chevy. Stick around.

Hey, welcome back to trucks where we're kicking off our muscle truck wars. But this is a battle that's been happening for a long, long time Ford against Chevy in the form of this 94 lightning that I've taken on up against the 1994 54 Ss that Ryan's adopted. Now, we've already established that the 454 is running, ok. But it's definitely not living up to its power potential.

We ended up with slightly under 200 horsepower and 300 ft pounds at the

wheels. Nothing to brag about, but considering power loss through an automatic transmission and 100 and 40,000 odd miles, it's about what we expected,

but we weren't blown away,

but that's ok. We know we've got a good foundation to build on as well as some pretty solid advantages over this little small block.

But now just like with the Ryan's truck, we're gonna do some routine maintenance filters, fluids, check everything out before we get it on the dyno.

We started by removing the plugs since you can tell an awful lot about an engine by the color and condition of the electrodes.

Now, the plugs don't look bad

but the gap is crazy. It's over 50,000. So we're gonna replace the plugs but leave the ignition wires and cap alone since that stuff is brand new.

But we also noticed this cut vacuum line which really needs to be fixed.

A new air filter gets dropped in the stock box and the vacuum line gets patched with some rubber tubing.

If left alone, this could cause erratic oiling or even a lean air fuel condition.

How does it look pretty rusty?

But it full

with the lightning on the lift, we drained the oil,

replace the filter,

checked all the other moving parts

and then we got a good look at the exhaust system

and like we said before, it's definitely been altered, there are obvious signs of leaking but it's ok for a test.

Look at the Welding. Look at the hair growing out of this stuff. It's a bunch of grapes and so what of this truck even runs?

Everything. Looks ok under here we'll get a new fuel filter in place. Get the thing over to the dyno.

We all know the reputation of these vehicles. The question was, how much does the previous owner experimentation and normal wear and tear eat away at stock performance?

What we got?

Uh, 224302. No way. Yeah, that's not bad.

She's running a little fat.

What we get, Tom.

Uh We got 2282 93 2 28. That's not bad.

Not bad at all. I think Ryan's gonna have his work cut out. I think he

is

after the break, black and red hit the road for a real world test.

So try to hang.

Hey, welcome back. Well, so far we've got both of these trucks tuned up and pretty close to stock specs and we went ahead and spun the dyno rollers to see what kind of horsepower and torque these trucks are making at the rear wheels. But there's just no substitute for an actual road test. And even though my lightning made more horsepower than the super sport is still not a real world comparison. So we're gonna take these trucks out for a spin, see how they do out on the street.

Both these trucks have a distinctly different road field than the regular production counterparts. Even with worn out shocks, pushings and springs, they feel responsive and agile more like sports cars than sport trucks. The super sport looks good with recent black paint, even though the factory chrome wheels are gone and the stance is bone stock.

This truck looks downright me.

The big black torque from the Chevy gave us a nice chirp going into second gear

and accelerated fairly well all the way through the power band.

But with 373 rear gears and no overdrive, it left us wishing for a four speed automatic

stopping proved to be another story, mostly due to the A BS module that only controls the rear brakes on our model.

It was like the A BS works.

The lightning sits a little lower and has a business like sound,

although traction can sometimes be a problem from a standing start.

Now, both of these trucks were surprisingly close to the factory power numbers at the wheels. So it's also no surprise that with pavement under this truck, this lightning is still capable of posting quarter mile times like it did in 1994.

It's amazing what just a few more years of automotive technology can bring about.

And the lightning with its four wheel anti lock brakes stopped a significant amount shorter than the Chevy.

Huh?

Must be that big block, dragging that other one forward.

Well, all in all this lighting is pretty tight but listen,

pretty good bumping. It's a twin eye beams, a center bushing it a little bit worn out, but for 88,000 miles. Yeah, it's kind of expected

now. It feels pretty good and strong when you punch it. The down shifts are nice. I want a firmer shift and I want a heck of a lot more power, but this is a pretty good starting point.

I also like the fact that he's got more rear wheel horsepower than that black bomb. And, uh, quite frankly, we're gonna put him in the dirt.

Uh,

this 4400 pound truck has a little bit of body roll. A little bit more than we like. So, uh,

if you lower it down a little bit, get it center of gravity down,

make it handle a little bit better. But really, it wasn't that bad for a big heavy truck.

You get up to about 45 miles an hour, about 50. Keep waiting for this thing to shift into overdrive. I'm so used to an overdrive transmission,

but that's all right. And, uh, it wouldn't hurt gas mileage either. You can watch the gates just drop t

to press the pedal.

Now, Kevin might be starting out with a little bit better truck. I'll give him that. But, uh, once we're all set and done with this big block is gonna mop the floor with that Ford.

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