Replacing an 85 2.3 with an 88

[YungICY]

My engine on my 85 finally went out the other day so I picked up an almost identical 88. My 85 is definitely in better condition and drives a lot better than the 88 so I kinda want to just swap the motors out.



Here's my questions.



1) the 85 has the Toyo trans and the 88 has the Mazda trans. Will this pose an issue or will it bolt right up?



2) the 85 has dummy lights on the dash and the 88 has needle gauges. What will need to be changed out to make either dash work?



Those are the only problems I foresee off the top of my head. If you have others throw em out there.





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[scotts90ranger]

just swap the long blocks, keep the wires and computer from the '85, everything should plug in and work fine, no use changing all of that if you don't have to...

 

[YungICY]

So physically it will bolt right in? Then all the wiring is the same? I assume to use the 85 gauge sensors?


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[YungICY]

Bump



I can't seem to find any info as to whether the 88 block with the Mazda trans will bolt up to the 85 tk5 trans. That is the only part of swapping this motor that I'm unsure about.


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[baddis]

as long as the 88 is a 2.3 the engine will bolt to the mitsu transmission. and if you swap the sensors off of the 88 engine onto your 85 engine you can use the gauges in the 88

 

[YungICY]

One more question. Does anyone know if the front cross member thing that hold the radiator is bolted in or welded? If its bolted in I would like to pull it off to make the engine install a little easier.


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[alwaysFlOoReD]

Welded.

 

[cody93]

trans interchanges from 74 to 01. the radiator thing is welded and part of the cab, taking the hood off usually provides suficent space, even witha tranny bolted on. what sensors are we talking about? guage sensors would be temp and oil, and they will interchange. are both them efi? if so, i cant see why there different.

 

[YungICY]

Thank you guys very much. I've got the hood off so I'll just make that work. The temp and oil sensors are the ones I'm referring to. The 85 has dummy light and the 88 has needle gauges. The difference between the two are, the 85's are just switches and the 88's are actual pressure/temp sensors ( don't quote me, I could very possibly be wrong.) I'm just going to buy new sensors for the 85 as they're about $10 each and it wouldn't hurt to have new ones anyways.


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[YungICY]

So I've been driving the truck for about a week now. I have it running on the 85 eec because it seems to run better like that.



My problem now is that it is getting extremely bad gas mileage. A good deal of it is because I have a 3.08 rear end and 30's on it (which is getting swapped for a 3.73 this weekend) but even before the motor swap it was setup exactly the same and I was getting decent mileage. Any ideas of what I could look for?


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