93 B2200 2.0L Turbodiesel

The truck is a 1993 Mazda B2200 LE-5 Cab Plus that I bought for $600. Has a suspected blown head gasket and no compression on the #4 cylinder.



The donor engine is a 2004/5 Mazda RF-CDT 2.0L turbodiesel engine out of a Japanese Mazda Bongo van. A (somewhat) local JDM shop imported a half dozen of them and seemed to have trouble getting rid of them. Advertised for $2000, bought for $1100.



From my research, it looks as if the motor mounts will be a very close swap.

There are a handful of issues that will need to be addressed and this is by no means a direct swap. I'll continue to update this thread with photographs on the issues and my workarounds.

When I attempted to do the RF swap, it was a direct bolt in for the motor mounts. Problems that I had were the bellhousing, starter, and (fail point) injector pump.

My hope is that I can make one good transmission between the two that I have.

My initial measurements show that the tailhousing on my Japanese 5-speed is 2 inches shorter than the Domestic 5-speed. That leads me to believe that the output shaft is also 2 inches shorter. I'm also not sure if the Japanese diesel 5-speed has different gearing from the Domestic gasser 5-speed (I suspect it does). I'd really like to use the "guts" of the Japanese 5-speed if possible because it has considerably less mileage on it than the gasser 5-speed in the truck now. I'll know more about parts interchangeability when I have both transmissions sitting side by side in about a week or so.

I perused your diesel build thread a while back when I first contemplated this swap. I have had the engine running on a test stand so I think my IP is good.

The Bongo transmission is bound to have a different set of gears. It' going to have a higher 1st and 2nd gear, and a lower 5th gear. I was able to combine components from my two transmissions to use the stock 1-4 gears from the B with the lower overdrive, replacing the 0.858 gear with the 0.701. I don't know what gears that yours has though.

I was able to go hop into my virtual time machine and pull up the Mazda website from 2005 and nabbed a specifications PDF for the Bongo Brawny. The gear ratios for the diesel 5-speed are as follows:

1 - 3.958
2 - 2.332
3 - 1.407
4 - 1.000
5 - 0.868
R - 4.263

I've been eye-balling that engine on ebay and wondered if it would be a good swap. I'll be watching your thread for sure!

I'm not sure if it's going to have the fuel efficiency advantage that I originally thought. I'm aiming for 30-34MPG but will settle for high 20's.

I'm keeping some pretty copious notes on the different hurdles I'll need to overcome to make this swap as painless as possible. I can share those with you if you wind up being interested in doing the swap. I can also share the Russian-translated wiring diagrams that I have, too.

Here is my thread on the other forum about Bongo transmission interchangabilty. It would seem that I did have a different set of gears in my transmission.



If you would be interested, I still have the transmission with my final setup, I'm not going to be using it anytime soon. I would only guarantee it for parts and not for use. I don't have any of the other gears anymore, they went to the scrap yard when I was cleaning out shop.

Thanks for the link!

My Bongo transmission differs from yours in a few regards, but it looks like we had the same issue in that the mainshaft was too short to simply just swap tail housings from a B truck. As I said before, I have my heart set on using the diesel trans because of how much tighter it feels and the fact it's actually geared with a diesel engine in mind.

I have two thoughts at the moment:

Simply swap tail housings and use a longer input yoke (custom driveshaft)
Swap the mainshaft from the B truck transmission to the diesel transmission (much more involved, but no custom driveshaft...don't know if it'll be a direct swap, either).

I'll keep your offer on the trans in mind. Where are you located, BTW?

I'm in Roswell, GA. Getting the transmission to MD isn't going to be cheap.

What you can do is put the diesel gears onto the gasser's main shaft. Mine interchanged perfectly (as shown in my thread) but I decided to go with the gasser's 1-4th gears. If it weren't for the dimension of the countershaft being different, I would have had better gears all around.

The drawback of this is going to be all the mechanical work involved. Perfect time to get new bearings as well, since you are already in there. If money permits, I'd just take it to a transmission shop and have their builder do all of the work. You will need to use the diesel bell housing and the B series tail housing, the center gear box should be the same.