[Curtis in Texas]

Hello, I'm fairly new here, but thought I'd share some of the things I've done so far. I mostly hang out on the Motorcycles and Scooters section. But, I have done some neat mod's to my Motorhome and Cars in the past, so I thought I'd share the car story with you folks.

A few years ago I found this new 1500 cc Turbo Diesel Engine from a Warehouse in Georgia.
Was trying to find an Isuzu Stylus to put it in, but couldn't find one in the condition I wanted it in. So I settled for a very clean 89 I Mark. Which just happened to come with that same engine in it in Japan that year too. So I bought the 4 door sedan for $800 and trailered it home. The FE 1600 DOHC gas motor still had some miles in it but was approaching 300 K so I didn't feel bad about doing an engine swap to diesel.
Did this about 6 years ago and have been driving it back and forth as my daily commuter and I'm happy with the little car. My best mileage according to my GPS is 45 with the AC off and 43 with it on. And this is with zero body mod's or Hypermileing. I drive it like I stole it and it does that well. I did manage to do some mod's in the 5 speed transmission though.
The engine originally came with an 3 speed automatic behind it. And the I Marks gas motor had this very low geared 5 speed on it. I found a few transmissions in the salvage yard from some GM cars that were made by Isuzu and I grabbed them. The tranny gears swapped around easy enough in the Isuzu cases. So I installed some low ratio gears for 1st 2nd and 3rd for in town low gears and the 4th and 5th are overdrive gears. IIRC about .96 for 4th and .74 for 5th. The final drive I swapped over to a 3:36's from 4:11 and I'm golden in town for red light to red light. I don't even shift to 4th unless I'm going at least 50 mph. Then at 65 I drop it in 5th and the rpm drops to 1450.

It's a fun ride so far. Maybe one of these days I'll go after that Stylus I found and get the aerodynamics it needs to be a super miler car.