I want to know opinions on diesel change overs, I want to take a toyota, Izuzu, Mazda(Ford), or what ever and put a small turbo diesel in it.  One how hard is it going to be and two is it going to be really expsenive?  I a mid 90's 5 speed, becuase I would rather do that then buy a new small pick up.  Another idea I had is to put a mid size diesel motor in a half ton pick up.  I know nissan has a 3.3 liter turboed, that in a 150 or 1500 would be nice.  Well i think it would be.  Just reaching for ideas and suggestions.  I know jeep has a diesel, but it is brand new and mostly automatic trannies.  

http://www.4btswaps.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=1

they can be more expensive than its worth. the cummins 4bt is a popular conversion for fullsized trucks.

for a chevy the 6.2 and 6.5's are a direct bolt in replacement for the sbc or bbc engines, 6.2 and 6.5's from 1982-1993 have mechanical injection so theres no electronics to mess with.
don't get these confused with the olds 5.7 diesel from 78. they aren't a POS gas conversion as most think.  

I had a neighbor that years ago swore by his Olds 5.7 diesel in in 88. He drove it 150K miles without problems until he had pump problems and sold car. He claimed that he got as high as 32 mpg on trips with it. In all fairness a lot of the problems with 5.7 and other early diesels in cars was maintenance as you MUST change oil in them often and not treat them like a gas motor. You run miles up between changes and you will pay a price. Another thing was quality of fuel then. It was very poor then and not very clean and it caused a lot of problem with early LD diesels that did not filter fuel and remove water properly or that fuel filters were nor serviced properly either. Even today it can be a issue. I have a friend that has a 05 Dmax he bought new and he learned that their can be a price for trying to save a few pennies on diesel fuel. Twice his truck had problems for water in fuel overwhelming filtration system and engine performance degrading and it was not from not servicing filter properly either.  

ya, I've never seen a 5.7 get over 27, and I've had a bunch of em, still have a bunch of parts and complete running engines... the old man still drives a delta 88 diesel. the old man got a regal with the 3.8 6cyl diesel for mom at one point, it did get in the 30's,  the biggest problem was keeping head gaskets in the 5.7's. not many bad heads actually and the early pumps had a plastic governor retainer in em that flaked apart and plugged up the retun lines, easy, temporary  fix for that was to knock out the check ball from the outlet nipple on the pump. the only time they needed seals was from running dirty diesel.  

My neighbor was "religious" about changing his oil and did so every 2500 miles and had aftermarket fuel filters too. It was retired in late 80's. He used to rave about it always getting upper 20's and low 30's on trips. For what it is worth, the olds 5.7 was not first engine from GM to share a block with diesel and gas motors. The Old GM 305/351/401 and 478 V6 gas motor used same block as V6 diesel then. A lot of Old's diesels were converted to gas too as it was not hard to do by swapping some parts.  

considering the difference in the land compared to here, he may have gotten 30...
yep that's the 6cyl we had in the regal...

the blocks only look similar, the main journals and cam (roller) are larger, a gas crank won't drop in the diesel block, all the accesories brackets exhaust manifolds water pump are the same, also the heads will bolt on. the block is specially cast for the injection pump drive/mount so ya can't just put on diesel heads on a gas and convert it to diesel, though ya can use the diesel block and convert it to gas for the heavier internals (crank and rods, (cam (which need to be built) it takes some work to get the gas  manifold on em because of the different cast.
they started in 78 then made more improvements in 80 with an even heavier block (dx version) 79 also brought out a 260ci v-8 diesel in the mid sized rwd cars.  

I did not say you could convert from gas to diesel with olds 350 but you could from diesel to gas. Also the GM V6's I mentioned used same guts in block and bottom end. Just changed pistons, cam, heads and fuel system changes basically.  

k well, I guess i misunderstood ya, as ya can see these are noting new to me the crap is everwhere ya look next to my shop...