Got a nice engine with low km from a 97 t100 AUTO, want to toss it into a 95.5 tacoma that is manual. Will the auto harness plug into the manual ecu?

 

No (or at least highly unlikely).

Strip the T100 motor down to essentially a long block, then swap all of the sensors and wiring from your 95.5 over to the T100, and install using all the 95.5 stuff.

 

Gotcha, so just take the wiring from the ecu all the way around the engine, and then toss is on the new engine. Makes sense.

Im nervous on the 97, due to the head gasket issues those early years had although the dealer said my VIN (for the t100 eng) doesn't fall into the effected engines, mine was about 14000 vin numbers above the cut off of the HG recall. So I guess it should be fine?

 

I have a 3.4 from a 96 in my 4Runner (close to 170K miles now on the 3.4), my brother has a 97 4Runner with the 3.4 (200k miles), neither of us have had any issues; I wouldn't worry about it. If the gasket does go out on you, pull the heads and fix it (or pay to have it done).

 

I just have the option to get a higher miles engine from a 98-99 as well. The wrecker here has a few. The 97 t100 was the lowest milage one. Weighing my options. Rather take one with 10,000 more miles and not have a HG issue in the future,

But then again, apparently this 97 t100 engine was never effected by the recall. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing as if it was recalled I'd know the HG was mint.