d21 change from petrol engine to diesel

[cheech]

hi,i have a 1986 d21 4x4 dual cab with a z24 motor in it and i was wondering if possible and how hard it would be to put a 2.7l td27 diesel
in it ?
thanks cheech

 

[Old.Tony]

Welcome to the forum, Cheech.

Changing over is possible - but it's not just an engine, there's a new ECU, fuel pump and a bunch of other things. Dion is worth listening to on this, he has a lot of knowledge about these vehicles.

Consider an intercooler as well, not just to improve performance but to protect the engine from a turbocharger that lets go.

 

[Dion]

how hard it would be to put a 2.7l td27 diesel in it ?

Oh man, if you really want to put yourself through that... You'll need a complete donor vehicle just about so you can park both in the driveway and start swapping. You'll need to swap over the fuel lines, in-tank sender unit (the tank itself can be reused, just wash it well with diesel), every wiring harness (that means pulling the whole dash out) except the door harnesses, the dash cluster including cluster shroud, hand throttle, exhaust, transmission, radiator, engine (with all accessories), fuel filter, all relays in the engine bay, and that's just what I can think of without a Navara in front of me to refer to. Unless you follow my stickied method for removing the transmission, or lift the body off the chassis to do the swap (not a bad idea), you're gonna have to remove the torsion bars to get the job done. On a car that old with that many frozen bolts, you're in for a long grind to the finish line.

Once you've done that and sunk $800-$1000 into a smashed donor vehicle, you'll have a less powerful engine, and a Navara that is still slow, but on the plus side it will use 10L/100km of diesel instead of 25L/100km of petrol, and it will last beyond 400,000km (until the transmission ***** itself).

If I haven't talked you out of it yet, then I think you're ready