What motor to run?

I'm getting a new vehicle shortly and would like to decide on a motor so that I can casually look for one and hopefully find a hell of a deal.

I need help deciding on a motor with the following criteria:affordablegood gas mileageis not too tall or too wide for that matterrwdreliableand not an insane amount of work to transplant

The motor can be anything other than chevy really. Nothing against chevy, the truck is a ford though and I really just don't want to hear all of the nonsense from both sides of the fence about a chevy motor in a ford.

I've considered maybe a vw deisel or I know izuzu use to make a smaller 4 cyl deisel.

Need some other ideas, like 22RE is this a good or bad motor for my application?

I'm clearly not a motor guy so I don't even know what to call half the motors besides the generic 302's 350's ect ect ....

u could always put a 2300 4 banger out of like a pinto it costs a lot to build but thats what most people run on circle track cars it's be different or jus run a 289 or 302 thats what i'm running

is there much reliability vs. gas benefits in running a 289 vs. a 302?

Edited: 8/13/2008 12:08:49 PM by HOLCOMBE347

what about the 22r? that motor has more the proven itself to me. i have a ranger thats my daily with the 2.3L in it with the 5 speed and its and absolute dog. if you even think about going up hill on the free way it wont turn 5th gear. its so low i dont even know why they put it in there. lol. the toyota motor (22r) is a motor that can be built relatively cheap, easy to fix, cheap to fix, and reliable. and you wouldnt have the computer mumbo jumbo to mess with. the reason i say the 22r is because im not a big fan of fuel injection. you can choke a carb down to get your mpg or if you want a little more, add more fuel. there are more factors to it than that but for sake of conversation. just thought i would throw it out there. good luck which ever you decide!

oh and a vw passat or jetta (maybe more but those are the only two i know of) came with a TDI diesel motor that gets around 50 mpg. the only problem is good luck finding one that decent enough to transplant.

289 and 302 are almost the same just the 289 has a small bore than the 302, my buddy rolls a 302 in his ranger and he said it gets decent gas mileage

the 302 is also nice and small compared to the SBC, mine fit in my mazda with a 2" hood scoop for the air cleaner with a 5" bd. The pan also has almost 1" clearance when laid out.

i had a 4 cyc. ranger that i changed too a v8 (302) and got better milage from the v8..

Originally posted by HOLCOMBE347



Edited: 8/13/2008 12:08:49 PM by HOLCOMBE347

what about the 22r? that motor has more the proven itself to me. i have a ranger thats my daily with the 2.3L in it with the 5 speed and its and absolute dog. if you even think about going up hill on the free way it wont turn 5th gear. its so low i dont even know why they put it in there. lol. the toyota motor (22r) is a motor that can be built relatively cheap, easy to fix, cheap to fix, and reliable. and you wouldnt have the computer mumbo jumbo to mess with. the reason i say the 22r is because im not a big fan of fuel injection. you can choke a carb down to get your mpg or if you want a little more, add more fuel. there are more factors to it than that but for sake of conversation. just thought i would throw it out there. good luck which ever you decide!

oh and a vw passat or jetta (maybe more but those are the only two i know of) came with a TDI diesel motor that gets around 50 mpg. the only problem is good luck finding one that decent enough to transplant.

My first thought was actually a TDI but wasn't sure how big of a motor that is. How hard is a 22r to come by? What's the difference between it and a 22re? anything?

How much do you think a reliable doesn't need rebuilt 22r would run me

the only thing is goign with a ford engine u could build 2 of most other engines to what it costs to build a ford it's like the whole ford period they dnt make much for them

just run a chevy 350, you know you want to.