Featured Technical Odd Engine Swaps

Did forget about a 70 k20 some old guy swapped in a diesel from I believe an international harvester combine.....might have been Massey Ferguson. Don't remember. Happened to see him getting gas at the same station I was at that day in 2014 and made the comment I hadn't seen one of those diesel. He made some comment that I for sure hadn't seen one like his and popped the hood. Guy wasn't a hot rodder or anything and admitted he wasn't trying to do anything with the swap when he did it other than make it work. Apparently from what I've heard since when that old guy hit 70 he got bored after retiring from farming and started seeing what he could put into what. Considering he was experienced in both welding and machining the answer was pretty much whatever he wanted into whatever he wanted lol. 70 k10 ended up being his daily driver. Apparently a combine engine gets crazy fuel mileage in a pickup lol

 

That guy is my hero.
I totally get why he did it.
All the Chevy muscle car guys are dick heads generally speaking and what a better way to make them mad then by dropping in not only a Ford but a dinosaur.
The only way it could have been better is if it would have been a Model A engine with an adapter kit for a Muncie 4 speed

 

dean moon helped carrol shelby with the first cobra small ford swap

 

455 Buick into a 1965 Mercedes 190D!
I never got it running, the engine was supposed to be good, but it had a spun bearing. I was broke teenager that inherited some things that do not go together. And no, it does not fit the engine compartment. The solution? put it under the dash! I saw pics of Chrisman's Comet, with the cammer where the transmission belongs, so....I spent way too much time configuring a back seat driving position. Those cars have a weird IRS that allows a 3 foot engine setback with a 6 inch driveshaft. Yeah, It was pretty weird. I have had a few fairly normal cars since as well, but I've always looked at things a bit differently.

 

flathead in a fox body

 

k20 Honda in a 29 rpu

 

Wonder who put a 413 in a GM....

 

Maybe not so odd anymore, but the last guy put the 322 Nailhead in my Mercury back in 1956. The TH700R4 came later on, obviously. Cruises 85 mph all day long.

 

Is that the one that runs at Bonneville I mentioned?

Dave

 

Friend of mine years ago had a 66 Chevelle Malibu 2 door hardtop he bought without a drivetrain. He found a 65 Buick that was a complete rust bucket but had a running 300 and super turbine automatic. Although not that difficult of a swap (since both cars are GM A bodies) it was still funny to see the Buick drivetrain in the Chevelle. Made a lot of people scratch their heads.

 

36 Buick ...413 Wedge , 727 automatic...Pushbuttons on the dash....My avatar...

 

In the seventies my mom had a 66 mustang with mercedes 200d diesel engine.
My father had a 58 bel air powered by perkins diesel. Also have personly see 66 park lane with volvo truck diesel.same guy had 64 monterey diesel too.
Gas was expensive way back then here in finland.

 

Saw this at a preauction viewing in Nebraska in 2006.

 

Historically people had little money and it was acceptable to put virtually any engine that improved performance into any brand of vehicle, if you already had the motor or could get it cheaply. As people swapped engines into cars, generally they looked for engines with more displacement as lots of us could not afford actual hot rod parts. There were some swaps simply done out of necessity because someones car quit and they had a different engine....so performance was not always the goal. After running into lots of problems when swapping engines, the "small block Chevy" became the most swapped engine.....because they were cheap, available, and compact and still offered good performance.

Today people usually have more disposable income, and (with certain exceptions like 32 Fords) (or any old Ford for that matter) people tend to want to put a motor from the same brand of the vehicle. Other than the Hemi, most Chrysler products are less frequently swapped into vehicles other than Crysler products or vehicles that faded away without ever having a high performance engine in its line up. Fords are almost never swapped into anything other than Fords and off brands. Chevys and other large GM engines seem to be the hands down choice for crossing the brand line, and now many people can afford to upgrade GM brands with that brands version of a large motor. (Pontiac in Pontiac)

Today, it seems more better to put a big Buick in an old Buick and a big Olds in an old Olds etc unless someone goes with an LS. Put a Ford in a Ford, or an LS in a Ford for drag racing. Chrysler in Chrysler.
Seems like the pendulum has swung somewhat in that vein. Still the most common swap in bridging corporate lines seems to be some form of a Chevy.........they are still mostly compact, and the best bang for the buck when building performance. (My Cadillac build hasn't been cheap)

 

Step-dad put a Eldorado front wheel drive 500 Cid setup into a square body Chevy p.u.

He drove it for years, Chevy guys would get bent out of shape when he would pop the hood.

He'd do a burnout every once and a great while and people's expression when it was the front wheels smoking and not the rears....

...

 

I did buy a '48 Plym 2 Dr. with an Olds 455 in it. To further add confusion I painted the 455 Ford Blue. Drove it 7-8 years until the tranny crapped out @ which point I dropped in a 331 Hemi/727.

 

About 30 years ago an acquaintance had a Model A tudor sedan with a S-10 4 cyl and trans swapped in. Used a 9-inch out of a truck to get the matching bolt pattern open drive rear. 35 wires and hydraulic brakes. It looked stock outside and inside, until you looked under the hood or underneath. It was a great driving car.

 

The late, great Rich Droter stretched the frame of a '90s GMC dually, installed a John Deere 6-cyl diesel behind the cab, TH400 tranny, step up gearbox on the nose of the Dana 80 rear axle. Professionally done and nice paint; wish I'd taken a photo.

jack vines

 

I saw a guy at a Friday night cruise a number of years ago. He had a little red Honda hatchback with the stock 4 cylinder in it. When he opened the hatch there was an Olds Toronado V8 and transmission hooked up. I knew something was up when I first saw the car because it had huge rims and tires in the back along with headers sticking out underneath it.

 

Cadillac 500 in a 33 ford

 

My Buddy and I were painting cars out of an old barn in Hayward CA. years ago. We painted a 57 T-BIRD for a guy. He bought the car at one of the big auctions. He bought tune up parts for the 312 and nothing fit. He found out it had a 350 Buick in it. The motor was painted Ford blue, with a stock air cleaner, he wasn't to happy about that. Never saw the car again after we painted it. It came out really nice. It was that baby blue that they came stock with.

 

I put a 215 olds in an Opel manta, currently have a small block olds in my el Camino

 

Those Hondas make crazy horsepower with very little work. Throw a turbo on one and do a little other work and you can get close to 1000 HP out of those 4 cyl Hondas.

 

There's a guy in southern Utah who put a Mustang engine in a Mercedes. He even replaced all of the stock Mercedes emblems with the pony emblems. A mechanic friend of mine who somehow got roped into working on it said it was really a piece of sh!t.

Larry

 

That one wasn't me. It was several years before I started swapping Mopar motors into other vehicles.

The Pontiac I installed the Mopar motor into got a pretty healthy 318, it replaced a really beat to death 389 that lost more oil pressure the longer it ran. If the old 389 was still running (with all the lifters clattering) when he shut it off, it wouldn't restart for at least an 1/2 hour. The 318 finished out the last 3 weeks of the season.

 

With the blower it's probably about the same horsepower as stock.

 

If the flathead 218 ends up being no good in my Plymouth. I may put a mercruiser 120/ 153 in it as it should work and I have one. But I hope the flathead is good enough to run

 

Not as unusual as most in this thread , in 1985 I put a 304 International in my 1938 International pickup with a Torqueflite. I left the stock'38 International rear-end with 4:10 gears in it for fun stop light to stop light runs.

 

My buddy has a Ford 289 in an early MGB, I've been trying to buy it for years as it's been sitting indoors for at least the last 10 years. Solid body.
I helped a friend who builds race cars swap a Chevy 454 / turbo 400 into another friend's (Paul) Mercedes 300D. It was funny to watch people's reaction when that car chirped the tires hitting 2nd gear. Paul wasn't mechanically inclined, so I did the regular maintenance. It would eat trans mounts, which was a combo GM / Mercedes contraption. Paul eventually moved out west (Arizona I think) with the car. I got a call out of the blue after several years from him, he took it to a Mercedes dealer to have the trans mount replaced and they couldn't figure it out. I wish I had that car now.

 

Some very interesting swaps from the old days and not-so-old days.
In high school my buddies and I did a couple odd swaps, all based on what was cheap and available; 352 Packard in a 40 Ford sedan, 389 Poncho in a 36 Ply coupe, 322 Buick in a Hillman Husky wagon. Later I helped my BIL put a 390 Cad in his 55 Chev ½T...gawd that thing was scary, my sister made him sell it.
A few years ago there was a local guy with a 55 T-bird with a DeSoto Hemi. It looked like a factory install.