Ok, so I did my diesel swap with an Isuzu 4BD1T a year ago this month and have put about 15K miles on it since then and I really love this engine! It is so simple to work on and has plenty of power for an FJ60 and gets great MPGs compared to a 2F.
I love this engine so much that a couple of months ago I found another NPR with the same engine and bought it for $1100 here in Tucson.
I pulled the engine and tranny out and all the other pieces that I could use and then sold the carcass for $550 to a dismantler here in town. I want to do a swap in the wife's 80 series, but she wants an automatic. I was looking at this engine and tranny sitting on my run stand and I got to thinking about how I could adapt an A440F using the bell housing off the Isuzu automatic and bolting it to the front of the A440F. I did some measuring and thankfully the Isuzu bell housing is shorter than the Toyota, so that left some room for an adapter plate. I had some 6061 aluminum plate that was 5/8" thick left over from another project and so after some careful measurments of flexplate to torque converter spacing and other overall length measurements, I concluded that it was possible to pull this off. One of the best things about this conversion was that the factory Isuzu torque converter uses a large plate welded onto the back of the converter to adapt it to the Isuzu flexplate.
This is perfect because it is all ready to turn into an adapter for the toyota torque converter. I carfully took my sawzall and sliced off the front of the Isuzu torque converter just above the base and voila, instant adapter plate!
I love this engine so much that a couple of months ago I found another NPR with the same engine and bought it for $1100 here in Tucson.
I pulled the engine and tranny out and all the other pieces that I could use and then sold the carcass for $550 to a dismantler here in town. I want to do a swap in the wife's 80 series, but she wants an automatic. I was looking at this engine and tranny sitting on my run stand and I got to thinking about how I could adapt an A440F using the bell housing off the Isuzu automatic and bolting it to the front of the A440F. I did some measuring and thankfully the Isuzu bell housing is shorter than the Toyota, so that left some room for an adapter plate. I had some 6061 aluminum plate that was 5/8" thick left over from another project and so after some careful measurments of flexplate to torque converter spacing and other overall length measurements, I concluded that it was possible to pull this off. One of the best things about this conversion was that the factory Isuzu torque converter uses a large plate welded onto the back of the converter to adapt it to the Isuzu flexplate.
This is perfect because it is all ready to turn into an adapter for the toyota torque converter. I carfully took my sawzall and sliced off the front of the Isuzu torque converter just above the base and voila, instant adapter plate!
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) I actually prefer the simplicity of a standard transmission over an automatic, but I wanted to prove that this could be done before I tackle it on my wife's 80 series. I also wanted to give you do it yourself guys another transmission option for these Isuzu 4BD1T or 2T diesels. This is not a hard adaptation to do if you have some basic machine skills. I borrowed my buddy's lathe for about 2 hours one afternoon and the rest I did in my garage with my drill press hand tools and taps and dies.
