At the moment I'm waiting on my stimulus check so i can put a transmission in my other car. I think i'm going to keep the trooper, Its in such nice shape that i really dont want to scrap it. i think im just going to drive my other car and save to get the tranny rebuilt, but im afraid of what the parts cost will be. Anyone have a guess to how much it will cost to rebuild the transmission? If its going to be too much I may just keep the motor and sell the whole trooper to someone.
Right now the head is off and at the machine shop getting checked out, I'm planning on porting it a little bit, but not too much, as i heard that supposedly the heads are known to crack. Hopefully some new stainless valves an maybe ceramic coating the exhaust valves and pistons with a dry lube coating on the piston sides. Sizing up a variable vane turbo now and will hopefully build a custom exhaust manifold to move the turbo forward and face forward, eliminating those stupid 90* bends in the intake an exhaust. The engine should breathe better and easier and should see the turbo spool pretty early in rpms thanks to the variable vane.
The new carpet came the other day and should really complement the interior since the carpet is the only thing that looks bad in this thing. The headliner still looks new and the seats dont even look worn. So once the motor is done, interior cleaned and put back together, the only thing left will be the transmission.
Out of curiousity, how many of the diesel trooopers were built? The way it sounds and how hard it is to get parts, not many i guess.