An ARC welder might do better. But TIG in applications like this is not a good thing. But if the metal is very thick say 3/16ths it might have a shot. But I would V Grind the material before welding and then do a fillet weld.

I know you are a Smart guy. But I will attempt to explain this a bit further even though I am no Teacher and bad at it lol. But with a TIG the heat area and welding area is very small and therefore keeps the high heat in the one small area of the weld. This is why in this case the crack is right at the edge of the weld and the original material as it becomes brittle there. Where as in Oxy/Acetylene it spreads the heat out a great distance from the weld so it will not cause a brittle area.

For these very reasons when I build a smaller Aircraft Air Frame I use Oxy/Acetylene as an Aircraft Airframe will twist and bend all over the place with stress. If I used a TIG it would fall apart in the air of which is normally not a good thing lol.

Awe, where's your sense of adventure?

Yeah, I'm definitely not a welder, so I have a professional welder buddy do all of my critical stuff. He mostly does TIG, so I'm not sure what else he's set up to do.

The material I should be receiving today is 1/8" wall compared to the 1/16" wall stuff that it's using now.

1/16ths wall. Ok I will not say a thing lol. But the 1/8" should work well. But then again many call me the Tank Builder lol. I tend to make things a Bit Stronger than needed. As I do not like things to BREAK lol.

It was the thickest that I could find before. Now Columbia River Mandrel Bending has the thicker stuff.

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I'm looking at an '86 five lug car and the 4.10's are just scaring me. I am not sure I want to swing the conversion to a solid axle or the 8.8 center section costs and that seems like a lot of gear to me! I think the low 3.xx Mazda diesel truck gear that some say will fit is a unicorn. :)

Where would you say the meat of the powerband is in the Kubota? I was thinking I wanted it at or around 2150 +/- 50 rpm at 75. Thanks for all of your pictures and help by the way!

The autos had 3.91 gears, so that would help a little. With the 4.10's and a T5 from a Camaro with a .63 OD I'll be turning 2084RPM at 60, which is the speed limit here. I can see that being a problem somewhere with a higher speed limit, 75 would be 2605/4.10 2484/3.91. The 8.8 center section swap isn't that bad when you consider the amount of fabrication you're doing just for the engine swap.

I haven't heard about the diesel gears, I'll have to look into it.

I think that depends on the turbo and other factors. My experience is that it pulls pretty well from about 1500, but really starts to rip around 2100 and keeps getting stronger until I shift because I'm too scared to rev it any higher. I've had it to somewhere around 3600.

Ideally for best cruising mileage I'd want it below 2000RPM. There's just no way it would push the air at highway speed in my Jeep at that RPM though, but I bet it wouldn't have any problem in an RX7.

My Ranger's "sweet spot" seems to be @ 1900-2100 rpm's and gets the best mpg's there.

Well, I ended up getting a deal that I couldn't pass up on car that fills many of the roles that I had intended for the RX7, so I think I'll be pickling the car and storing it for a future project.

That leaves me with a spare low hour engine. While the engine in the Jeep is strong, it's been subjected to a lot of stress and abuse through testing different configurations in the 20,000 miles it's ran, including finding the boot popped off the intake of the turbo after a dusty off road excursion one time early on. It has a fair amount of blowby at idle.

I've been thinking about doing some work to the spare engine and swapping them out just to get a fresh start. I'd like to do compression tests on both engines to get an idea of where they stand. I'll definitely pull the other engine apart to refresh all of the gaskets, but some of the other work I'm considering is:

Pistons ceramic coated
Piston skirts impregnated with dry film lubricant
Combustion chamber & applicable associated areas of head ceramic coated


I haven't decided, but I may go full monty and integrate a Civic/Insight IMA hybrid system just for fun.

I'm open to thoughts and ideas.

I need to try and stop by here at least once a month! Nothing new, but I finally unloaded the memory cards from this summer.