Can you put a 1998 1.6 liter fuel injected suzuki sidekick engine in your 1987 suzuki samari carburated 1.3 liter?

Answer 1

You probably can, but it may be more work than you were thinking. While I never made this swap, at one time I owned 2 1986, a 1987, and a 1988 Samurai, and considered swapping in a Geo Tracker engine. The basic engines between the carb 1300 and the fuel 1.6 are very similar...the stroke is longer, so the 1.6 is slightly taller. Also the newer engine needs a high pressure fuel delivery system while the 1.3 used a mechanical low pressure fuel pump driven by a rod off the camshaft, attached to the passenger side of the engine head near the firewall. In addition the 1.3 engines were usually 2 valves per cylinder, while the 1.6 I looked at had more...I think 3 valves per cylinder (1 intake, 2 exhaust) but it's been quite a few years, I may be wrong, maybe the fuel injection engine had 4 valves per cylinder.

What this means is your hood might not shut, the engine might be too tall. I was not worried about that because I had fabricated a 3" body lift out of square steel tubing, which effectively had the side benefit of 3" extra height in the engine compartment. Due to the different number of valves per cylinder you will need to use the exhaust manifold from the fuel injected engine. Due to the fuel injector in the place of the carb, you will also need the intake manifold from the newer engine. If the newer engine has only 1 intake valve per cylinder you conceivably keep the carb and old intake manifold...but I would advise against that because one main flaw in my experience was the carb...I would want to get the fuel injection for many reasons...one of which if you mixed parts from the old and new engines you could get in "passing smog hell", if you are in a state like CA, where I am located. I don't know the exact answer to handle the fuel delivery needs. Perhaps scavenging the whole tank and lines, etc from the donor vehicle. Or maybe you could buy a high pressure electric fuel pump. But if you do that you will need to get creative with wiring to it so it will auomatically stop if the engine is not running, or are in great danger of a catastrophic fire in a collision. And you probably also need to take the computer that controls the engine from the donor vehicle.

In conclusion, if you have access to the entire newer vehicle to get all sorts of parts and are willing to alter the hood or put on a body lift, I think I would have been able to do it. (You could cut out a hole in the hood and add on an after market hood scoop for the added clearance, I think.) But it would be a lot more work than just hoisting out one engine and dropping in the other.

Good luck in whichever you decide to do. If you DO opt to try the swap please write me and let me know how it goes, as even though it has been 8 years since I sold my Samurai's, I still get lots of questions on modifying them.

Paul Hoffman

prhkgh@comcast.net