No crank after stalling out

There's also a fuse 38 in the Rear Junction Box, but that one is listed as "not used".

A simple trick to finding a short is to replace the blown fuse with a pair of spade terminals (for spade-type fuses), then use small jumper wires to connect them to a 12 volt light bulb. A brake light bulb works well. When the circuit is live and the short is present, the bulb will be full brightness and hot so be sure it's not laying on the carpet or against a plastic door panel. Now you can unplug electrical connectors and move things around to see what makes the short go away. When it does, the bulb will get dim or go out.

To add to the misery, you'll see at the top of the first diagram, 12 volts comes from the Ignition Relay. On some car models that relay only turns on for one second, then again when the engine is cranking or running. It is not practical to have a helper cranking the engine while you do the testing, and one second is obviously not enough time. If you find the 12 volts goes away shortly after you turn on the ignition switch, you can bypass the ignition relay instead with the light bulb, but you'll have to install a good fuse 38.

Insert the two spade terminals into the ignition relay's socket, terminals 3 and 5 as pointed out with the blue arrows in the fifth drawing. With this method, the ignition switch doesn't even have to be turned on. The rest of the procedure is the same, and it will save you from blowing dozens of fuses.

What I have seen time and time again is the white with blue wire on the diagram that I've provided will get chafed against the transmission pan edge and pop that fuse! I would look there first!

Thanks BMDOUBLE. Is that the one on top going to the floor shifter?

Ford has had a lot of trouble with their ignition coils, but not by shorting out internally. They usually fail to develop enough spark voltage. For that reason, I'm inclined to lean toward the white / blue wire BMDOUBLE mentioned, then a shorted coil as the lesser suspect. That smoke you saw could be caused by that wire arcing, then it drifted up to the valve cover area.

If you use the light bulb in place of the relay, you'll see the bulb flash bright an dim when you wiggle the wiring harness along the transmission pan. If that doesn't do it, and the bulb is bright, unplug each ignition coil and see if the light dims.

Caradiodoc-yes, Follow the white-blue wire (yellow brick road) especially near the transmission pan.

All right. One in a row! Happy to hear you solved it.

You didn't say if the test bulb was still in place when the engine started. A brake light bulb only allows one amp of current to flow, and that may not be enough to run the circuit properly. When that happens, use a head lamp bulb instead. A low-beam filament allows up to five amps to flow. That is usually enough to keep an ignition system or an injector circuit working, while still offering circuit protection if an intermittent short shows up.

Awesome!