Good luck. Those engines are not very easy nor fun to pull! When I swapped out my engine, I got one from the junkyard, I got quoted 3,000$ range for a rebuild. As for the junktpyard one, I payed 550$ dollars for it. If you are in a area with a lot of troopers, getting a donor would probably be best. As for your Trooper, I have the exact same year, however I have the dreaded auto... which was rebuilt before I got it.

 

Finding a used engine, from a donor or otherwise, sounds like a good plan to me.

 

I almost bought that truck! However my boss shot down the idea of me pulling apart another car in the warehouse at work. You totally scored it's very clean, and the seller seemed like a decent dude. If you go on row52.com you will find listings for pick a pull yards. I just pulled the center console to match my manual swap from a 2nd gen trooper last weekend. It's over at the pull and save in Phoenix off of 27th ave and buckeye. It's the exact same truck as yours. I believe they sell used engines for $299 with a warranty. If you don't want to pull it yourself I have a number for a guy who pulls parts in that yard. I forgot what he charged me to pull the manual trans for my rig, but it was super reasonable. He also kept all of the fasteners, clips etc.. BTW any chance you want to sell the aisin manual hubs?

 

Thanks for the advice, all.

Update: the engine and transmission are out, hopefully we will have a donor in the next week or two to make the swap. It wasn't the easiest to work on, but definitely easier than either of the Subarus I used to own. It also helped that my buddy who used to work as a mechanic brought all his air tools over.

I almost bought that truck! However my boss shot down the idea of me pulling apart another car in the warehouse at work. You totally scored it's very clean, and the seller seemed like a decent dude. If you go on row52.com you will find listings for pick a pull yards. I just pulled the center console to match my manual swap from a 2nd gen trooper last weekend. It's over at the pull and save in Phoenix off of 27th ave and buckeye. It's the exact same truck as yours. I believe they sell used engines for $299 with a warranty. If you don't want to pull it yourself I have a number for a guy who pulls parts in that yard. I forgot what he charged me to pull the manual trans for my rig, but it was super reasonable. He also kept all of the fasteners, clips etc.. BTW any chance you want to sell the aisin manual hubs?

Hmmm, that pick and pull might be a good route, but I'm still leaning toward buying a complete donor so that we can make some of the cost back by parting it out. the PO was definitely a good dude, but if he had manual hubs for it I didn't get them (otherwise they'd be going on-- the auto hubs were already a problem when we were pulling the transmission). The truck is in really good shape aside from the engine. My partner spent most of this weekend detailing the interior and now I have trouble believing that it's 22 years old.

 

Picked up a donor today. 2wd 1995 rodeo with the 3.2. 136k miles, runs well, but the body and interior are in kinda rough shape and the transmission is very dead. $340 delivered to my driveway by the previous owner. We'll only be keeping the engine, so if you want parts, let me know.

 

And you can probably recoup some of that money selling parts from the Rodeo here. Dennis

 

That's the idea. I'll get a classifieds post up on here soon.

 

The engine compartment in a Trooper is pretty tight. According to the service manual, to pull the engine you first have to pull the transmission. The bolts connecting the two were pretty darn tight.

We did not have a transmission jack at this point, so getting it out was a team effort.

Lowering the transmission with a floor jack and three people stabilizing it was not fun. 2/10, do not recommend.

By the end of the day we were ready to pull the engine. It's very easy to get air tools on the motor mount bolts when there are no heads on the engine. Unfortunately, the engine was disassembled to the point that the hangers were no longer attached, but we had a pile of head bolts, so we attached the chains from the engine hoist to those and yanked it right out.

 

Next project: prepare the donor to pull the engine.

We decided that it would be easier to get the engine and transmission out as one unit, but to do that, we had to take a sawzall to the body.

Comes right out!

 

Having the engine and transmission out made it much easier to remove the bolts between them. Air tools are magic.

While it was out, we replaced the timing belt, water pump, head cover gaskets, common volume gasket, and clutch.

One note: remember to put the lower bellhousing cover on BEFORE the flywheel. we had to take the clutch back off after putting the engine in to put that in place.

 

IF YOU DO THIS SWAP, MAKE SURE TO CHANGE OUT ALL OF THE ACCESSORIES. The Trooper and Rodeo (of the same year, same engine), use a different alternator, starter and vacuum control location. We didn't change some things until after the engine was in and that was a massive pain in the neck.

From there it was mostly straightforward putting everything back together. The only real issue was the starter (turns out we forgot to attach the main grounding cable to the engine--oops!).

Once that was fixed, the engine fired right up and passed emissions testing on the first try. We are now on the road!

 

Nice work!!! Good to see you got it back on the road!