therealazdon
+1y
I've been truckin for 30 years and my advice regarding 2-stroke detroits... fuggidaboutit!
Improved power-to-weight? NO! Improved fuel mileage? NO! The power and acceleration band will make you wish you had your big-block back! As diesels go, 2-stroke detroits ARE NOT torque monsters and must be wound up to deliver anything at all. Where most of the modern-era truck engines top out at 1800 rpm and lug down near 1000, those detroits run between 1500 and 2200 rpm.
There are WAY BETTER engines to use if you want to do a truck engine, but you should know that if you take this kind of project on, you will be seriously overloading the suspension, brakes, and front weight bias. Before deciding to do this, you should crawl under a big rig or even a medium duty AMERICAN MADE city delivery truck and scope out the size of the transmission, driveshaft, and differential that goes behind a truck diesel.
It's my feeling that you will hafta cut out your firewall and floor to get the stuff in there. After you are done gettin it in and hooked to a spliced driveshaft, I think you'll have an overpowered beast that won't handle, won't stop, and will be bottomed on the front suspension..... Before you get these problems sorted out, it's likely that your diff will be broken, as well!
My advice, ig you still wanna do a diesel swap is to find a wrecked dually diesel pickup and salvage everything and learn,learn,learn!
Truck engines better suited to what you're doing are the 3208 Cat v-8 and many of the newer/smaller diesels made for new-era medium duty. You could also check out some of the foriegn isuzu/iveco/mercedes/volvo offerings.
IMHO, you'll spend so much on the project that you'll never get it back in energy cost savings!