What diesel engine to swap in 83 Toyota pickup?

The old Toys were rear wheel drive, so any of the rear wheel drive engine/tranny combos could be made to fit. Toyota's diesel had some reliability problems. Isuzu, Mazda and Mitsubishi made good ones, although you'll probably want to use their tranny as well. Adapter kits can be expensive and not as strong as OEM parts and most small diesels came with the same 4 or 5 spd manual tranny as used in the gasoline powered models. Automatics weren't available in the small diesels due to the low power they produced that was reduced even more when trying to drive an automatic tranny. You are looking at a newer engine to get a turbo. A diesel operates at much higher compression than a gas engine. If the diesel engine wasn't designed for a turbo, don't add one.

If you want to try something that would really give power, look into the Mercedes 3 liter 5 cylinder turbo diesel with its 4 spd Automatic tranny. Great power and great fuel mileage in a package not much larger than a 4 cylinder. An MB 300TD power train is usually good for 4-500,000 miles with basic maintenance. Look for a wrecked one, as the price for a new or rebuilt would be very high.

Toyota Pickup Diesel

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What diesel engine to swap in 83 Toyota pickup?

I picked up an 83 Toyota pickup 2wd a while back, and I wanted to eventually swap a turbo diesel engine into it. The Toyota L engine came stock in the 83 diesel option, but I have heard it wasn't a great engine.

What engine would be recommended? I would ideally like a 4 cylinder...

83 Toyota Pickup

If you have the cash, i would see if you could go to a junk yard and get a VW TDI and the transmission with it and see if you could just match that up

Im not super familiar with those old Toyotas but i know TDI's from VW and that sounds like exactly what you are looking for

4BT Cummins. not the billy bad *** cummins in the dodges now adays this one is only a 4 banger diesel