a friend and i are swapping a 16 valve engine into his 90 sidekick.  will the 16 valve just bolt in in place of the 8 valve that came in it, or will we need to change over a lot of other things?  my 89 had a 16 valve swap when i got it, but i cant find the previous owner to ask about this.
by the way, we dont have a donor vehicle, he ordered the engine online, so we cant just go get parts.

isn't the 16 valve a multipoin injection and the 8 valve throtle body injection?
in that case you need to build the whole injection and fuel management system over.

the block itself should be a perfect match

To do the swap, you'll need a engine/vehicle harness from a 95 2-dr with 16v, as well as the ECM. The 5-speed tranni should be the same right through all years, but you might have an issue if it's automatic. You would have been better off with a donor vehicle so you can take what you need. Id find a donor in a salvage yard to get parts when needed.

why would we need new harnesses? could we just swap the fuel injection from the 8 valve? he got a new auto tranny with the engine too.

why would we need new harnesses? could we just swap the fuel injection from the 8 valve? he got a new auto tranny with the engine too.

I would think that the fuelling would be all wrong. It is possible to swap the 8V stuff on but you would have to make a plate to go between the inlet manifold and the head to blank off the injector recesses.

The 8V is TBI, 16V is MPFI....the fuel system is different....

thus you would need the harness to fire the additional injectors and a cpu to do it...

unless you go mega squirt or something like that

your eight valve harness is different then the 16,, it'll be like trying to plug a square plug into a round hole.. just aint gonna happen... good luck a happy tinkerin(

The computer is different, so the harness is different, you will DEFINITELY need a donor vehicle, or at the least, a cooperative junk yard with a 16v to get EVERYTHING from. Computer and wiring harness.. It's a bitch, and usually easier to just find a wrecked 16v. I wanted to do this myself. but the gains weren't worth the price. It ended up being cheaper to sell my 8v Track and buy a 16v Track.  I didn't do it. I just kept the 8v..  too much  hassle.

Still looking for a decent 16v but the prices are rising fast!!  These kicks are good investments when you can find them under a grand, JUMP ON EM!!

alright, thanks. were trying to find a donor vehicle, but the last one we found didnt have the harness, so we will keep looking.