Swap a 22RE manual into a 22re auto pickup
 

Hi,


The head on my daily driver 94 Pickup (22re auto) has finally blown. I let some idiots work on it last year and have had all kinds of problems since. I got 92 pickup (22re manual) off a friend today to use as a parts car, he isn't sure whats wrong with it exactly, but I strongly suspect the ECU or the wiring, because it acts exactly like mine does if the ECU gets wet. After I opened the dash to remove the lock cylinder, and saw the wiring I figured that was just as likely to be the problem.

My mechanic says that it will be easier to swap the engine from the parts car onto my truck than to change the head. After looking at the service manual I agree, it does seem easier to swap the engine than to replace the head. Is there anything I need to worry about if I take the manual engine and put it in my auto truck?

I did some reading on the forum and saw a lot of posts about people who where asking about putting an auto engine in a manual truck. I did see some stuff about drive shaft length and wiring harness but I have all the parts form both auto and manual, any real headaches that I will run into if I try this?

Just to clarify, I only want to swap the engine, not the transmission. Ive had a nasty motorcycle accident in the past and can just barely work a clutch.

I decided to just change the head, I'm not sure what might be wrong with the parts truck and we would have to build a engine hoist. When we tried to start the parts truck we found that the electrical system is a cluster f$#*. No lights on the dash with a charged battery. When we jumped the starter motor to the battery, it doesn't sound right. Someone had blown all the fuses then bypassed them by winding copper wire around them. We also found that someone had removed the power steering gear and 3 of the bolts were sheared off and 4th didn't have a nut. Someone had tided the steering wheel shaft on to the steering gear with a shoe lace! We towed it to my house behind my other truck like that, and one of my friends had been driving it like that before it died! I might have to post some pictures of that just to be believed. Well what do I expect, I got the truck for the price of a throttle body on eBay.

My friend and I tore down the engine on my daily driver, removed the cylinder head and timing chain cover. When I took off the head I found that cylinders 3 and 4 were milkshaked. I took the head to the machine shop and they took one look at it and said it was toast. The oil / water passages are blocked and have eroded into the combustion chambers of cylinders 3 & 4. Luckily the machine shop had a rebuilt head they were willing to sell me for less than welding / machining mine. The new head has already had all the machining done, has a cam that has been machined to match and they are installing new valves etc for a total of $200, and it will be ready tomorrow. It seemed like it would save a lot of time to just buy the rebuilt head rather than tear into the parts truck.

Anyway, if someone can answer my original question, are there any major problems associated with swapping a manual engine onto an auto truck that would be great. I'm planning on pulling the parts trucks engine to rebuild it and my friend already has truck in mind that needs an engine, that one happens to be an auto also. I have to get rid of the parts truck in the next couple months, Im not allowed to have "junk cars" where I live, so we are going to part it out and put the parts in my shed.