First and foremost was the intake. The throttle body, injectors, and sensors all had to be swapped over from the 95 intake to the 96 engine so it would fit the wiring harness of the 95 truck. The 96 uses more modern style (and better IMO) connectors with the push tab, whereas the 95 uses connectors held in with a metal spring retainer. The throttle body is significantly different between the two years, and I just swapped the whole 95 unit over instead of trying to adapt the 96 one to work. Injectors had to be swapped over because of the aforementioned connector differences, but other than the connectors, the fuel rail assembly was identical.
Exhaust was identical between the two, so next up was the Distributor. The biggest hurdle I faced in this swap was that the 96 uses an ENTIRELY different style distributor from the 95, so much so that even the mounting flange is different. The 95 dizzy has both the crankshaft sensor and camshaft sensor built into it, and has a seperate ignition coil mounted on the driver side fender of the truck. The 96 has a integrated ignition coil, and houses only the camshaft sensor, with a dedicated crankshaft sensor bulit onto the bellhousing of the transmission. Because of this I had to reuse the 95's dizzy, and heres where I had to get creative. The "correct" way would be to swap over the front cover from the 95 to the 96 engine so the distrubutor mount would be correct, but I didn't want to go through that effort if I could avoid it, so here's what I did:
96 distributor lined up at TDC, ready for removal
95 distributor mocked up on the hole. This is where I noticed the mounting flange was totally different, and I decided to drill and tap a new mounting hole.
I rotated the distributor housing to line it up TDC, and noticed I had plenty of space to make my new hole
Using a paint pen and a center punch, I made my mark and got ready to drill.
The finished hole. I chose to drill and tap a m8x1.0 hole because I had a bolt that size that was ideal for this, and the smaller size would leave some "meat" between it and the existing dizzy holddown bolt
95 Dizzy mounted and installed! I figured one holddown bolt was enough since thats how the VG's are but I'll keep checking on it and give updates.
One last thing I found was the power steering mount bracket is JUST SLIGHTLY different between the two, since I kept my 95's pump I had to carry over the bracket too.
And thats it! The truck runs now and I'm just buttoning up a few more things before I can drive it. Hope this information helps someone!
