Quote:
Originally Posted by hefty lefty
Cars in the fifties and sixties had too few gears. You will want at least a four speed automatic or a five or six speed manual in any conversion.
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There are people who put B series Cumminses and Duramaxes in cars. No car is really capable of handling the weight, they belong in trucks and trucks only. Suitable car conversion engines are mostly Japanese, the Mercedes five cylinder, and if you have a big budget the VM and Steyr European engines.
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It's depressing seeing people swap in engines that were either no good in the first place or not suited to the vehicle.
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The old 3-speed stickshifts used in American cars were really not so great for mileage, its ratio is not usually the most efficient ones for 4-pot light-duty Diesels and many of them could hardly survive to the high torque pulses of a Cummins. No wonder many of the Diesel swaps I've seen into American cars with light European and Japanese engines had either a 4-speed or a 5-speed stickshift. I've even seen some vehicles which were originally fitted with older automatic slushboxes retrofitted with manuals too.
People seem to be swapping engines which you deem as not suitable to their vehicles because of the lack of options back there in America.