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Crazy Idea for Jeep Willys wagon

There is a '59 (I think) Willys Wagon for sale in my neighborhood. The body and suspension are good but the owner made some modifications, ie he swapped out the original motor for a Chevy 390 or something.. The guy wants about $4000 for it. I think I can talk him down quite a bit, but if I do I don't want the motor. What I'm wondering is: what's the feasability of dropping a diesel motor in there? I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of a 2.7 or 3.1L. I'm looking for fuel economy, maybe even bio-diesel, dependability, reasonable torque. I'm NOT looking to build a rock crawler or anything too radical. I've swapped several motors and I'm not afraid of a little fabrication. Any body out there tried anything like this before ?

Thanks, Jim

Reply to
Jim
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Interesting swap, should be quite do-able. Some early 60's jeeps had Perkin's engines-

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these showed up In CJ's, there was also a military variant of the FC that had a french diesel (Cerlist?) installed.

A lot of people have been successful swapping the smaller diesels into CJ's -

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I haven't heard of anyone doing a Waggie although considering the larger engine bay & same driveline if you can do it in a CJ a wagon/truck should be no problem, if fact a lot of the larger engines such as the 6 & 8 cyliner Cummins may become an option. I'd suggest asking on the Willy's Tech group-

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H.

Reply to
Howard Eisenhauer

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