OK here we go again.
The 2.8 turbo, intercooled Isuzu diesel that we put in the Grand Cherokee last year has about 24K km on it and running like a dream.
Its time for a new project and my 99 Dakota 4X4 is begging for a transplant. The 2000 Isuzu NKR that been sitting outside for
the last 3 years cant be licenced in North America because of DOT regs (anyone need a new NKR cab?).
so its 4HF1 4L is going (I hope) to find a new home in the Dakota. This is the same motor thats in the NPR cab overs but without the turbo (at this point).
Pulled both motors today and then lowered the diesel into the Dakota bay. Boy does it look silly, more like a dog trying to swallow a football.
It will take some oilpan triming and a 2" body lift but I think it will fit. The biggest problem is relocating the starter which is rear entry and mounted up high,
I hope to use the exising bottom mounting bolt as the new top bolt and then add a new hole into the adapter plate to fasten the bottom of the starter.
Going to machine up an adapter plate to use a modified Dodge auto tranny.
I will add this project to the Jeep web page once we get further along.

BFN
Randy

Sounds like a nice conversion. I'd love to do something like this.
I do have a question: how do you line up the crank center to tranny center? Worded another way, if I were to mate a motor to a different manual transmission, how do I mark the adaptor plate so that the pilot shaft is dead center of the crank? I didn't have this problem with my conversion, as they were mated already. It may seem simple to some, but I'm not sure.

Thanks.

Index the bellhousing to the tranny either by the outer diameter of the input bearing retainer (on a NP435, SM465, T5, etc.) or the input shaft bearing itself (by removing the non-round input bearing retainer to on a Toyota R151F, most aisin-seiko derivatives, etc.).

Or, if there's a bellhousing available, you can just swap it on, using the built-in indexing of the input bearing retainer or dowel pins, as above. This is definitely important, though -- if you don't get the centerlines of the crankshaft and tranny mainshaft to overlap their origins AND axis, you will fail either the input shaft or the bearings that suspend the crank and mainshaft. Making some form of runout check is good insurance...

Randii

We build adapters for installing electric motors into many vehicles so this is not much different.
The old tranny is fixed in a CNC milling machine and all the bolt holes and center of input shaft are entered into the machine.
Then the new tranny in fixed in the milling machine and the same process happens. Next a piece of aluminum plate goes
in (or one of our adapter castings) and whiz, whir out comes an adapter plate.
Well not quite that simple but not much thinking goes into them anymore.
In the past we would spend hours figuring our centers and the "magic" number which was the spacing between the old flywheel
and the difference with the new flywheel so the clutch would work and you didn't end up pre loading the end of the tranny input
shaft. You usually have to change the pilot bushing as well to fit the new input shaft.

BFN
Randy

Randy, I'm DAMN jealous of your CNC capabilities -- I've done mine with the low-tech hammer-and-anvil techniques, working off the bearing outer diameter and the existing planes and bolt holes... it is precise enough to work, but everything hinges off the initial assumptions, as opposed to pulling the centers off the mill display, with equal precision and no cascading dependencies.

I oversimplified above -- as Randy noted, there's some mojo in making the stickout depth of the input shaft, retainer, pilot, clutch, and etc... and the clutch linkage and throws all have to be worked out, as well, but those were pretty easy, compared to getting the shafts in line and in axis.

Randii (also a Randy, BTW)

Well, for all it's worth, it makes me feel less of a dummy when you guys tell me how not-simple it really is. As I once wrote, father-in-law put a Perkins tractor engine in a Ford F250 that had a 5 spd (4x4, by the way), and he never told me much in the way of center alignment and distance. He did have help of a machinist, so he was likely the key.
Which was another reason I went with the Isuzu conversion, as I checked, and it looked like the whole thing should fit in relatively easy. In the case of a 2wd, I think it would be much easier to start with a motor/transmission already mated, as long as they physically fit in there. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />