I cheated. I had an 87 Quest that needed a new balance shaft sitting in limbo up at a warehouse in the city. Bought the 88 Monty from a gentleman who said it had a "shimmy" on the city roads but not on the highway. That "shimmy" turned out to be sticky valves and they finaly stuck themselves while I was in the middle of a road trip. Had the Monty towed up to the warehouse and parked next to the Quest. I was pretty warry of putting a BS elimination kit in the Quest w/o having the bottom end balanced out so I decided to swap the Quest head onto the Monty's bottom end w/ good balance shafts. Was fairly straight forward. Removed the carb ECU 'n harness and whatnot, then installed the Quest harness and modded the old ECU box to fit the Quest's board. The head/electronics swap should have only taken a weekend, but other commitments and chasing down electrical gremlins sucked up many hours.

What would I have done differently? Definitly would have gone for an 88-89 harness/knock box and ECU. Would have used a good Quest bottom end and -possibly- put the Quest's final ratios in the Monty. It doesn't like passing other cars going 80, but then its a truck not a sports car and changing finals would probably ***** its off-road abilities.