Clean the engine and engine bay as much as possible. This may sound dumb, but working on a greasy, oily motor makes it much harder and more tiring of a project to complete.

Drain the engine oil, tranmission oil and coolant.

If gas to diesel swap. Drop the fuel tank and clean it out to prep for diesel. Remove all flexible fuel lines and replace with diesel rated lines.

Clean the engine again……because draining it always gets stuff on it.

Label all of the incoming and outgoing accessories for the engine: coolant lines, electrical accessories/starter and sensors, fuel lines, clutch lines, brake lines (if they need to be removed).

On a 40 series, remove the front of the truck off the hinge. On a 60 or 80 series, remove the hood. This might seem like extra work, but it makes the job SOOO much easier.

What are you going to use for an engine hoist and transmission support. Thinking about it before hand saves you time.

Disconnect all of the incoming and outgoing accessories. While you are at it, pull them to the sides of the engine bay and zip tie them out of the way so that they don’t get caught on the engine going out or coming in and break one of them.

Remove the accessories: alternator, hydraulic pump, compressor, etc… as well as the battery/tray.

Decide where and how you are going to organize all of your fasteners as they come out. Some, like the drive shaft nuts and bolts are important to keep together to reuse, others just can be kept as the spare pile.

Disconnect your drive shafts front and rear from tcase. Then disconnect drive shafts front and rear from axles.

Support your transmission.

Remove transmission supports (bar, tabs, etc. depending on engine).

On 40 and 60 series. Remove rear axle drive plate and disconnect parking brake cable.

Disconnect spedometer cable and transmission position cables from transmission.

For manual transmissions, disconnect slave cylinder from transmission.

Remove shift console and boots inside the car.

Disconnect 4h/4l levers from transmission. Disconnect gear shift lever from transmission. If not possible do step 18.

Unbolt bell housing from engine, tilt and wiggle transmission to separate from engine.

Lower slightly to access upper transmission plate. Remove bolts and wiggle gear shift lever and upper transmission plate around engine and lower out of the way.

Lower the transmission, and set out of the way.

Position engine hoist above engine and chain to lift points.

Remove engine support bolt nuts, break free/wiggle and lift engine out of engine bay.

Prepare engine for putting into truck. Prepping some of the parts of the engine

If it is getting a turbo, drop the oil pan from the new engine and weld the oil return bung to the pan. Reattach oil pan. Remove existing exhaust manifold and attach turbo manifold and turbo. Run oil feed and return lines. Run water input and output lines. All of this will be much easier to do while the engine is sitting out.

If the current engine and transmission mounts are not going to be reused with same transmission/engine. Remove them from the frame.

Some people will leave all of the engine accessories mounted to the engine to put it in. Others will remove them all. If you remove them all. Remember to put them all back in basic place before finalizing the mount locations to make sure you have proper clearance.

Some people like to assemble the engine to the transmission to place into the engine bay, others would rather put the motor in approximate place first and then attach transmission from below. On a 40 series with the front removed. I would lean towards attaching. On a 60 or 80 series. I would do them separately, but that is just me.

Position the engine in the vehicle, allowing around 1 inch clearance with the firewall to give you as much engine bay space as possible. Use the engine hoist for temporary positioning and/or create temporary cross supports to the frame or from below. Getting the engine/tranmission position correct will take some wiggling back and forth till you get the final position.

If separated from transmission, attach the tranmission to the engine. If the gear shift is removeable from tranmission, preattach the upper plate. If it is not removeable, slide the gear shift lever up through the tunnel into the hole and position over the tranmission bolting in place.

Move the engine and tranmission until it is as close to the firewall as possible with clearance for movement and the gear shift lever is in the tunnel through the gear shift cut out with free movement in all of its directions and centered as is possible.

Lift the motor and transmission up towards the tunnel as close as possible giving clearance for movement. Adjust the angle of the motor and transmission to mirror the tunnel angle, keep the engine in the right position inside the engine bay and the tcase positioned where it should be to provide access to connecting the drive shafts. Test align the drive shafts with the tcase position. They may need shortened or lengthened, but they should be clear of frame supports with the new motor position.

Set the radiator/intercooler into position to make sure it has clearance from the fan blades.

If all is good. Fabricate your new motor and transmission mounts with the existing (or new) vibration dampeners to this position. Mark the frame for location positioning. Lift the engine and transmission for clearance. Attach the mounts to the frame.

Lower the engine and transmission onto the new motor/trans mounts with vibration dampeners, bolt through and loosely attach nuts.

Connect systems to engine: sensors, electrical, coolant, starter, glow plugs, etc… some wiring, lines might need to be re-routed from the old to new engine.

Install radiator/intercooler. Run lines for both to engine, intake and turbo.

Install battery.

Check glow plugs for heating (if swapping from gas, some mechanism for heating glow plugs will be needed - push button if you don’t have a key with multiple start position electrical connections to take advantage of).

Fill tranmission, oil and coolant. Check for leaks.

Prime the fuel lines. Usually using a 12v pump at the engine bay to pull the fuel to that point before going into the engine saves time. With diesel, then manually prime the pump with the plunger. If no manual prime, using the 12v pump to push some diesel into the pump will help it prime.

Crack all the injector lines at the top of the diesel injection pump at and the injectors.

Without warming the glow plugs, just trying to prime. Crank the motor until each injection pump exit line has diesel leaking out. As they leak out steadily, tighten them down. Keep cranking the motor in bursts until diesel is leaking out of each injector where it goes into the block.

Now warm the glow plugs 2-4 times and crank the engine.

Once started. Check for coolant into the turbo. Oil into the turbo.

Check for vapor lock in newly filled engine to make sure coolant is flowing.