My search skills aren't working this morning as I am sure this has been discussed before.  I am picking up a 87 samurai that supposedly has a bad transmission.  I am unsure if the motor is any good as its been parked for some time.  I am tossing some ideas around and one of them was to pull my 1.6l 8v engine and trans from my 92 sidekick that has a rusty body and put it in this samurai.  I saw kits that mate up the 1.6 to the stock sammy trans but nobody mentioning the reuse of the sidekick trans.  Do things just not line up or what?  How involved is it to put in the 1.6l and does anyone have a good link to a walkthough article?

You can use the trackick tranny but........

The samurai tranny tunnel will have to be widened....since the trackick tranny is wider.
If the trackick tranny is 4wd, the overall length will be so long that the samurai tcase will have to be moved back.  And the samurai intermediate shaft slip yoke is not the right spline to mate up to the trackick tcase output shaft......but you can use the trackick slip yoke on a samurai intermediate shaft....since they all use the same sized ujoints.  The samurai intermediate shaft will have to be very short to keep the rear driveshaft an acceptable length.  Plus the stock tranny crossmember will have to be cut out and a new one made.
If the trackick tranny is 2wd, then you can shorten the samurai intermediate shaft and keep the samurai tcase in the stock location (the samurai intermediate shaft slip yoke has the same splines as the 2wd trackick tranny output shaft).  The samurai tranny crossmember can be left in place and will work for supporting the 2wd trackick tranny (you have to drill a couple new holes in the crossmember for the tranny mount to bolt up).