Hey guys and gals,

I know there are a lot of people that move around this site and I thought i would ask. A friend of mine is wanting to swap a SBC into his IH scout and run it on propane. He has the SAE 4 adapter to bolt up the tranny to a SAE bell housing. He just needs the SAE to SBC piece. He says that they used SBC on industrial equipment that uses the SAE stuff (pumps, generators etc.) but nobody on the web seems to have or know where to come up with such a thing. If anyone knows anything about this SAE stuff and can help out please let me know.

Thanks in advance!

 

i had a 78 scout travelall. it was a tank.

Anyway I'm not sure what adapters you need but check out this site.
http://www.advanceadapters.com/



Is this the adapter you need.... https://eshop.advanceadapters.com/co...=1129687128671

 

My buddy had bought the stuff to drop a small cummings diesel into his scout. That included a bellhousing for his T-18 trans that bolts to an SAE 4 bolt pattern. A lot of the small industrial engines and stuff used this SAE system to make everything standard. It works sorta like a two piece bell housing where the motor comes with a whatever to SAE 4 half and the tranny comes with a trans to SAE 4 half and they bolt together. So since he already has all the SAE 4 stuff for the trans, he was hoping to avoid junking all that to go to the SBC.

Thanks for the replies and keep them coming!

 

I really don't seem to have all of the equation to beable to help.
I think I'm missing something...

First post I thought the way I understand it was that he wanted to put in a propane powered Small Block Chevy. (yes/no)

But then the second post says he wants to put in a Cummins. (Yes/No)



For the SBC you can get kits that include the engine mounts, hogs head adapter plate, carrier bearing relocation, wiring harness, etc, etc. Everything that you will need to drop it in and fire it up, all in one box.
For the propane; that conversion comes in a kit too. Installed with simple hand tools, I think if I remember right, a hand Drill was the only power needed.

On the diesel, First off: I am not sure if the T18 will handle the torque of a cummins or any diesel for very long. Second I doubt a production adapter will be available any where. That wil have to be custom fabricated at a machine shop. Also make sure there is enough room in the engine bay for a diesel and radiator. A diesel requires a lot bigger radiator to keep it cool because diesel burns much hotter than gas. Also that may require lots of fabrication, firewall alterations, custom engine and transmission mounts for proper drive shaft alignment and suspension articulation. Also major suspension upgrades to the front suspension to handle the added weight. I've never attempted such a project myself. But I forsee many, many, many, many, unforseen obstacles in this energetic of a project. Bell housing adapter is going to be the easiest part!

 

PSS Mag,

Sorry for the confusion. He had the stuff already to swap in a 3 cyl diesel already. I may be wrong it may have not been a cummins. It was an industrial diesel that several people are using that uses an SAE 4 bolt pattern for the bell housing. He bought an adapter to bolt the T18 tranny up. This adapter exists because at some point international made a light duty diesel i guess (all second hand info).

He found out he will be moving to DC and would need to commute so he decided to drop the diesel idea for now and go with propane so that he can drive in the HOV lanes alone, the toll roads free etc. So he thought high compression small block to get the benefits of the propane. Anyway, long story short, he want to keep options open so the easy answer is to find an adapter from SBC to SAE 4. That way the only thing that he would have to do to go to the diesel is just pull the SBC and drop in the diesel (plus motor mounts of course) which now I remember was a 2 stroke detroit, which he was also considering running on propane ( that's another story in itself but it's really cool).

He knows the propane injection swap is just a change of injectors basically. So basically he needs the SBC to SAE adapter. the rest is a simple change of a special clutch disk, and a custom pilot bearing which is not a problem.


Anyway, hope that clears things up a bit.

 

If it's fuel injected I dont belive you have to replace the injectors. I belive it is simply changing the fuel pressure regulator and making sure that the ECM, is a MF (Multi fuel) unit. With fuel injection the injectors shove the gas in with enough force that proper AF is achieved so only thing needed is retarding the timing. With a fuel injected engine if desired a fuel selector may be installed which allows him to switch to Gasoline at the flip of a switch. It changes to the Gasoline tank and turns on the fuel pump. The MF-ECM will automatically detect which fuel it is running and adjust the timeing accordingly. This is handy on trips since Propane isn't available on every corner nor 24 hours a day, like Gasoline is.


I have the dash to my f150 tore apart right now fixing the chronic intermittent/no odometer problem.

When I get through sodering the odometer back together, get the instrument cluster back together, installed and hopefully working. Then I'll dig throu my favorites and find more info on this as well as see if I still have any links for the adapters. I haven't had a Scout in several years so I don't know if they have gotten lost or not, but I think alot of them are on my Jeep sites too so I wil defiantly have those as well as the alternative fuel links.