1st gen toyota

Interested in swapping a tdi into a 82 toyota pickup 4wd. I want to keep it pre 97 so I dont have to smog in California. I was wondering what motors would be good candidates. I am also not a wiring expert and that is the part of the swap that would be most challenging for me.

IANAL but 97 and before engines would be the 1Z/AHU from the 96-97 Passat or 97 Jetta.

That said, when my conversion was done, they only checked that the engine was diesel. Externally, it'd be hard to tell the difference between a 1Z/AHU and an ALH unless you really know what you're doing.

Since my vehicle is 78 it is now registered as a 78 diesel needing no smog. I did not go to the referee. It was all done at DMV. Search the forum and there's more info on CA DMV experiences.

IMO, I'd think about an ALH. You can get more power from them when highly built but more importantly a 100K mile timing belt. They're also newer.

Good luck!
Mark

P.S. Post lots of pics if you decide to move ahead!

You didnt have to state what the motor came out of?

Keep in mind Mark, the 98 jetta had the ahu as well. To op, they will most likely want to know what vehicle the engine came out of. One thing is for sure, the engine must be newer than the vehicle it is going into.

whats the easiest to wire up, anything converted to mechanical?

82blue said:

whats the easiest to wire up, anything converted to mechanical?

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Yes you can convert to mechanical. Search for mtdi build. Or mtdi pump build. When you convert to mechanical, like I did, you must either swap to a mechanical pump, or build a mechanical pump using some older idi pumps, combined with parts from a tdi electronic pump. Or you can just use one of these, they are pretty much straight bolt on. A little work is still required, at least with the one I used, such as fabbing a bracket on the rear of the pump. But it is very easily done.
http://advancedautomotion.com/shop/product_info.php/cPath/66_132/products_id/109

whats the advantage of mtdi, just simplicity?

Simplicity yes. Theoretically you only need one wire to run the engine, and that is to the fuel solenoid. There is downsides of course, you can't just plug it into vag-com to diagnose problems. You can tune it by hand though, no computer required, that is nice, but it may not be for optimal performance as it would be with a computer.

Well with an mtdi its much simpler.Therefor having vag com wouldnt be a huge benefit to my eyes since only a few number of things can go wrong. I believe that if its a truck and you take it out in remote areas/dip it in water ,go mtdi.

MTDi is the way to go for most conversions IMO.

bbob203 said:

MTDi is the way to go for most conversions IMO.

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I heartily agree.
There are hundreds of thousands of small to med.-large trucks throughout the world that are using VE mechanical DI pumps. There's many. many options for building a pump but there's two drop in solutions depending on the motor ypu choose. The VW LT 2.8 #0460424138 pump bolts right in to an AHU/1Z TDI. The Rover 300 TDI #0460414099 pump is a drop in for the ALH. These are just two examples of pumps easily installed on our engines. There's literally dozens of other pumps & combination of pumps & parts to create a powerful, reliable and simple TDI.
Read this:http://www.vwdiesel.net/forum/index.php?topic=6427.0 as an intro to M-TDIs. vwdiesel.net is a forum much more receptive to the idea of M-TDIs.

You will still have people arguing with you about the mechanical swap being better. However, if you are gonna build a trail, hunting, fishing rig, mechanical is the way to go because you don't have a whole wiring harness or computer to worry about.

awesome, thank you guys thats the info I needed.

In my experience I have never met someone who had an mtdi that said they were unhappy about it. The ones who naysay do so without having actually built one. I daily drive one and my partner drives an ALH etdi I trust mine more.

I kinda went back and forth on eTDI and mTDI in a toyota I am building. I decided on the eTDI because I really want a VNT turbo. Another reason is that I enjoy building the truck and it gives me more work to do on it. If I was just looking to get it in the road I would have gone with the mTDI.

You can still run vnt with the mtdi

djtc said:

You can still run vnt with the mtdi

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This. It's just harder than to do it with etdi.