My truck is a 1998 3.9L 5-speed and is in great condition. It has 208,000 miles and can hardly whip its way out of a wet paper bag, it's so patheticly lethargic. Fuel mileage is still decent, amazingly enough, at about 20-21mpg. Yesterday I bought a 1991 5.2L automatic with 122,000 miles for $450 with the intention of scrapping it out to spend time with my kid, give him some experience tearing down a vehicle and maybe make some money as well. The problem is that when I drove it I found out that the 5.2 runs like a scalded dog and now I'm getting new ideas in my head.
I myself am not an expert mechanic by any means but am somewhat capable doing basic repairs. My buddy, on the other hand is a great mechanic with lots of experience on Mopars and the tools to do pretty much anything that needs to be done. Does anyone know if it would be reasonably easy to drop that 5.2 into my 1998 without creating new problems? A couple of his concerns included 1. possibly different motor mounts, and 2. the crank sensor being at the bell housing area instead of in the distributor. Are these issues easily solved, and how?
What other areas of concern do we need to consider?