A small question about swapping engines from a Maxima to a hardbody.

[fragmentchaz]

I'm not a mechanic by any means, but will be attempting to swap the engine in my 1986.5 hardbody with a VG30E that was in a 91 Maxima. I'm going to be getting some experienced help swapping the engine out, but was looking to make sure I wasnt going to find a snag along the way. Should this be a relatively clean replacement? My truck is a standard and the maxima potentially could have been an automatic. Would that cause problems? Did they design them to be interchangable?

Sorry for my ignorance...I'm just trying to revive my old truck. Not scrap it.

Thanks!

[mtcookson]

As long as your truck came with the VG, it will be a breeze.

Basically, just swap all of the external bits from the truck engine to the Maxima engine (sensors, intake and exhaust manifolds, pulleys, etc. etc.) and it will drop right in.

If the Maxima engine had an automatic on it there will be a little bushing thing in the crank that you will need to pull out so that you can put the pilot bushing in.

Now, one thing you'll need to keep an eye on is the crank snout. Your truck's engine may have the older version being a short snout while the Maxima VG will definitely have the long snout. I remember reading that the crank pulleys would swap between the two but you'll want to confirm that before putting the engine in, just in case you need to do some accessory/accessory bracket changes. Other than that it should drop right in without any problems at all as the block and head castings are pretty much identical between the RWD and FWD applications. (there were some minor head differences between some models being port and I believe cam differences and then of course the newer W-series VG that had some internals changes but nothing external ever really changed minus the crank snout).