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What's harder? Diesel swap or Manual tranny swap?

OffRoad

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i want a 6.2 and 465 for the buggy i built in my head. hard to find diesel stick shift trucks. would it be easier to find the stick shift and swap in the diesel or the other way around?
 
i would think tranny would be easier. you need to cut for clutch pedal and for the shifter and probably some other stuff. i havent dont either swap yet, but im going to be swapping in a diesel, and im not really looking forward to it haha

i believe Rene has actually done both swaps in his current truck. im sure he'll chime in with his .02
 
K5 & Burb never came with diesel & stick.. silly, I know.

I think it's easier to start with the diesel and change the trans. I've done that route, fetching the parts as I went. IMO, a diesel swap has more gotchas - so a complete donor vehicle is preferable to make it go smoothly.
 
I agree with Kevin, the diesel swap is more involved with more things you either don't or can't anticipate. By compariosn the stick swap is easy enough...

Also, if you get a complete donor and get the diesel swapped in with an auto you have spmething to drive while you chase down 465/205 parts etc etc.

Rene
 
I changed my 95 burb from 454 to 6.5 - it takes a lot of work and extras to make it correct. The swap to a manual is much more straight forward.
 
Seems converting to manual would be a little easier. If you were changing engines instead - it gets more complicated depending on how far you want to go. I've saw one conversion where the original vacuum-brake booster was retained and the glow-plug circuit was a simple push button. A thorough changeover would require some instrument changes, glow-plug and timer wiring, water-in-fuel system hooked up, hydroboost added for brakes, dual batteries, etc.
In regard to diesels and standard shift - I've got four - they don't seem too rare in my area (central New York). My neighbor has two K20 6.2 trucks - both with M465s. I've got two 1982 K20 6.2 4WD pickups - one has the M465 trans and the other the NP833 overdrive manual trans. Also got an 85 K20 6.2 diesel with the M465. And - although I've been told they weren't made - I've also got an 82 K5 Blazer 4WD with 6.2 diesel and M465 trans. I'm not the original owner but it looks all original to me.
The Detroit Diesel built 6.2 engine has the same bolt-pattern as the Chevy V-8s - so it seems all the gas stuff will fit except - you'll need a 6.2 flywheel.
 
Realistically, it's just as easy to wire the few electrical items from scratch as it is to fix, modify, and bypass the junk the factory put in there. ;)

I still think the trans swap is simpler.

I would be neat if there were some stick-shift 6.2L K5s that rolled off the assembly line. My info is from from dremu's scanned brochures which are quite explicit about what transmission they were offered with.
 
u2slow said:
I would be neat if there were some stick-shift 6.2L K5s that rolled off the assembly line. My info is from from dremu's scanned brochures which are quite explicit about what transmission they were offered with.

I'm pretty sure even GM didn't know what it offered in each year. Back then there were tons of vehicles that were customed ordered and a lot of options that were supposedly offered on ordered vehicles were delivered without them. By the same right, some options (that hardly anyone knew about) were made and delivered.
 
38377k5 said:
I'm pretty sure even GM didn't know what it offered in each year. Back then there were tons of vehicles that were customed ordered and a lot of options that were supposedly offered on ordered vehicles were delivered without them. By the same right, some options (that hardly anyone knew about) were made and delivered.

Yes - that seems to be true. My K5 with the 6.2 diesel and standard trans. looks original - but it has no RPO tags on it - so I cannot say for sure. I did once, however, come across a Chevy dealer in Texas selling Chevy stationwagons around 1983 with 6.2 diesels in them. He claimed they were custom ordered that way - although I've never seen a record of Chevy ever producing them. I also have an 83 K5 diesel Blazer - that I did get from the original owner - and he custom ordered it new with a T400 trans. Now, by "custom order", I don't know for sure if it actually left the factory that way - or it was a dealer-installed item. It has a mechancal governor on the trans. and is quite different than my diesel Suburbans with T400s - they all have VRV vacuum simulators for trans-shfiting.
 
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