Got myself a diesel fuel economy monster (2002 VW Golf TDI). Great little car, bad for hauling and towing.

Then I got myself a diesel torque monster (2004 Ram 2500 Cummins). Awesome truck and great towing, but not so great on the fuel economy side.

So, how can I get the best of both worlds? Throw an old Mercedes diesel into a small pickup? Nah, been done too many times before and I like new technology, not old. How about the 1.9L VDub engine in a small pickup? Might not be too bad, but I already have one VW...and one is enough. Maybe an Isuzu NPR engine? Fuel economy just doesn't seem good enough for the trouble it would take to swap one of those into anything.

Love my country, but the good ole US of A isn't exactly a hotbed for small, economical diesel engines. I guess we can also thank General Motors for completely destroying the reputation of the diesel engine with their epic fail of the 5.7L V8 back in the early 80's. The EPA isn't helping with their revolving door of rules and regulations.

We can, however, thank the environmental and motor vehicle regulation entities of Japan for their equally strict and backwards rules. It is because of them that low mileage engines are now yanked from scrapped vehicles and shipped to our soil. Engines otherwise completely unobtainable in the USA are now becoming a dime a dozen. Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) parts resellers are popping up all over the east and west coast and shipping engines in by the crateload.

I happened to grab myself one of these fabeled JDM engines. The one I decided to go with was a Mazda MZR-CD 2.0L turbodiesel mated to a 5-speed manual transmission out of a Japanese Mazda Bongo. This engine is also used in the European-market Mazda 3, 5, 6, MPV and a couple of others. Based on my research, this engine makes somewhere in the 120-145HP range and produces anywhere from 230-270ft-lbs of torque. My numbers span such a wide range because there is a standard and high power version of this engine and I simply don't know what I have. The numbers are also based on the European Mazda6 specs and I believe that has a different tune since it is intercooled and my engine is not. But, enough words, on to some pictures:















I don't have much of a plan for it yet, other than to get the wiring sorted out and getting it running on a bench. It has a few quirks I'll need to work out - like a drive-by-wire system. It had an OBDII port on it at one time, but it was snipped off so I'm going to need to find those wires to get one back on the harness so I can do some communication with the PCM. My biggest challenge will be not having a wiring diagram available so I'm going to have to figure this one out on my own.

 

Fellas - one at a time please. I'm inundated with the responses here. I'm not where to start...

I have a penchant for being a little different and traveling off the beaten path and I think this little engine certainly fits the bill.

Since we last met - I've built up a test stand for the engine - fed it some fresh diesel fuel, figured out where all of my 12V mains are going and figured out how to power up the main relay on the harness to get power to the PCM and IDM (injector driver module). Unfortunately, it still won't fire up and the fuel seems to be going through a bypass in the high-press injection pump and back into the tank - can't get any flow to the high pressure side of the pump.

So I'm back to where I started - no wiring diagrams and only a "similar" electrical schematic to go off of from a diesel Mazda 6 from Europe. The wire colors are not the same and the PCMs have different connectors so it's not an apples to apples comparison, but it does at least give me an overall picture of how the electrical system is setup.

 

i think this would be pretty cool man, keep up the work to figure out the wiring and when you get it to run post a video.

I have a 49 chevy truck I need to find a diesel to put in.

 

I'll keep y'all (well, one of you) up to date on my progress. Ordered a couple do-da's which should make the wire tracing go a lot smoother. I've got a bunch of the wires figured out - going to document it all and take it one wire at a time. No room for error if I short out something in the PCM or IDM.

 

Didn't know I had to decide which forum to watch! CC just seems more convenient for me but I'll be watching this too.

 

Yea sorry about that - not trying to spread it thin across multiple forums. I'll keep both threads up to date. Figured this forum would be interested in the swap, too and I think it'll gain more traction once I can get the thing up and running and prove that it can be a viable powerplant with great power and fuel economy.

 

http://s6.photobucket.com/user/terrawombat/media/1992%20MJ/VID_20130511_073856_zps7870e55e.mp4.html

 

It lives!!!!

 

Kudos! This is a great project. Do you know if the engine can handle biodiesel?

Is there a central source for buying these engines?

How do you plan to handle gauges?

Regards, Jurgen

 

I saw some folks on the UK Mazda 6 forums talking about biodiesel, but I don't think any of them actually ran it. There was also some chatter on a Russian camper van forum, too, but reading the translations were giving me a headache.

I do not know of a central source (other than Japan), but there seems to be JDM importers along the east and west coast that get these in every now and again. There are two places on ebay currently selling them:

One in Kearny, NJ (where I got my engine): http://www.ebay.com/itm/MAZDA-BONGO-BRAWNY-2-0L-TURBO-DIESEL-ENGINE-TRANSMISSION-HARNESS-ECU-JDM-RF-/230973133852?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item35c712541c&vxp=mtr
One in Jamaica, NY: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MAZDA-BONGO-BRAWNY-2-0L-TURBO-DIESEL-ENGINE-TRANSMISSION-HARNESS-ECU-JDM-RF-RF6D-/281104931297?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item417328d9e1&vxp=mtr
What's funny is I seem to have driven the prices of these engines way down. The outfit in NY was selling them for $1999.99 at one point, but weren't getting any hits. The ones in Kearny had a no reserve at $999.99 and were selling around $1250. I went up with cash and bought it outright for $1100 and I see that the Kearny outfit has a buy it now slightly higher than my price and the outfit in NY dropped their price significantly.

I thought the gauges were going to be tricky since I assumed they would all be over the CAN bus network, but after reviewing some of the wiring diagrams, it looks like all of the gauges have their own individual signal wires. If that's the case (and I haven't spent a lot of time looking at the instrument cluster diagrams), it may be a lot cheaper/easier, although I was kind of looking forward to having an excuse to buy one of those fancy customizable gauge clusters.

I also need to change the title of this thread. After further research, my engine is an RF-CDT (RWD version). The MZR-CD is the FWD version used in the Euro/Japan-spec Mazda 3, 5, 6 and MPV.