repowering ford 6500 with car engine?

I've read in Farm Show magazine where people repower tractors with car engines instead of trying to rebuild hard to find or expensive tractor engines. I have a 1972 ford 6500 backhoe that needs rebuilding. The injection pump alone will cost $750 to rebuild. I can get a complete car engine at the junk yard for less.
Is this feasible and if so what engines would be a good canidate for this project?

(quoted from post at 23:50:06 12/30/09) I've read in Farm Show magazine where people repower tractors with car engines instead of trying to rebuild hard to find or expensive tractor engines. I have a 1972 ford 6500 backhoe that needs rebuilding. The injection pump alone will cost $750 to rebuild. I can get a complete car engine at the junk yard for less.
Is this feasible and if so what engines would be a good canidate for this project?

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Huh? You want to replace a diesel engine with a gas engine to save how much? Given the time, labor, spare parts, replacement parts, just spend the $750 for the pump rebuild and be done with it.

That engine is not really cheap to rebuild, but a car engine isn't much to work with in place of it either.
Why hack the tractor up like that?
750 bucks for a rebuilt pump, guarnteed... is a GOOD deal for a Simms pump.

The more I read farmshow these days, the more I wonder about the practicality of most of the ideas in there. I think it would be more appropriately named 'FreakShow' at thsi point in time.

Rod

Hell, I own Internationals because I don't want a car engine in my TRUCKS...and yet you'd consider putting one in your TRACTOR? Unless it's a Powerstroke, a Cummins, or an International DT-series, you're just playing with yourself. Tractors are supposed to WORK; car engines are built to CRUISE, not carry a load.

Actually IH did put truck engines in tractors and it worked ok to not so good,

Actually IH did put truck engines in tractors and it worked ok to not so good,

IH never had a successful inline diesel engine before the DT466. Everything else was just a matter of trying to get something right...which they finally did. Then the 6.9 was pretty decent right out-of-the-box.

But I dare you to show me a Ford or Chevy GAS engine with the pure GUTS of a comparable-sized International truck gas engine. The Ford and Chevy "car" engines would rev higher and quicker, but when you really need to pull something, you get an International so you can actually DO the job. Closest thing Chevy had to a gas "truck" engine was the 348/409...and some idiot in the GM marketing chain decided they'd be better in an Impala on the dragstrip.

And when Ford wanted a "real" truck engine, they went to IH for the 6.9 and 7.3 diesels. It took Cummins to build a Dodge diesel, and Isuzu to design the Duramax for GM. ANY of which I'd put in a tractor, you understand...just not a "car" engine under ANY circumstances, unless I was building a high-rpm pulling tractor for runs of 300 feet at a time, not for pulling a plow or a mower all day.

Actually they put the 5.9 cummins in tractors. Big self propelled sprayers and such.

People can say car, truck or tractor engine without being real specific. For example, the basic block, maybe even heads may be common among two different engines.........they can't be called the same. In a car application, the torque and horsepower curves over the RPM range of each will be totally different & for good reason. Same would go for a Cummins in a Dodge PU vs a tractor application. I've had experience with auto engines in 2 ton trucks, bad operational experience (good learning experience). Design engineers know what is needed for the application and design for that application & the differences are great enough that ignoring those and mis-applying an engine/application results in a piece of junk, the exception being the novelty of something for fun & show that does no real work.........& that is OK too if that is the objective.

Unless your engine is blown up, it's better to fix it. A car engine would be too fast for the hydraulic pumps and doesn't have a governor. Trying to fit a car engine into a regular tractor is one thing. Trying to fit one in a backhoe would most likely be a nightmare. Dave

Farm Show Magazine is a joke and not to be taken seriously.

OK, so a total rebuild of your backhoe engine will cost how much? Can you do it for five grand? And after it's done how much will the backhoe be worth? Ten grand? So you're ahead by several thousand bucks, depending on what the scrap value is of your backhoe.

Now let's go down the car engine route. A good engine is going cost a few hundred bucks. But then you have to mount it in the 'hoe. That is going to take a lot of work and you'll have to purchase or fabricate a few parts. If you put 200 hundred hours into it, and you value your labor at 20 bucks an hour, that's four grand you've invested on top of the parts. So you really didn't save any money. After you're done with this project, what's your backhoe worth? Probably scrap value. Maybe a thousand bucks. You actually lost money by going the cheapskate route. And now you have a machine that's going to be nothing but aggravation to operate and maintain.

It is the cheapskate who, in the end, pays the most.

Cheapest fix is to repair the injection pump.

I don't mean to argue with everyone on here, I'm just exploring all my options to get this backhoe going as cheap as possible.
I found some Continental 6 cycilinder diesel engines on governmentliquidations.com that are coming up for bid soon. They look new, in metal crates. If I can get it to fit, would this be a good engine for a tractor. I think they are 150hp and are used for 5 ton military trucks.

(quoted from post at 23:50:06 12/30/09) I've read in Farm Show magazine where people repower tractors with car engines instead of trying to rebuild hard to find or expensive tractor engines. I have a 1972 ford 6500 backhoe that needs rebuilding. The injection pump alone will cost $750 to rebuild. I can get a complete car engine at the junk yard for less.
Is this feasible and if so what engines would be a good canidate for this project?

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Good idea with great intentions. Only problem is it won't work. The swapping and converting and addition of electrical, instrumentation,fuel, cooling,governor,accessory drives etc.
You will spend less money purchasing a 20 year newer hoe and pawning the old off to some budget minded tinkerer.

With all the 580 Case backhoes out there cheap I would haul it to the scrap yard and buy a decent Case for about $5000-$7000 dollars that doesn't need a rebuild. My friend bought a fairly nice one for $4500, did a bit of work with it and sold it for $5000 about 6 months later.

You could purchase the engine and then find out it that it's impossible to make it work in your backhoe. Your best bet is to either repair the engine you have or find another engine the same. Like someone already mentioned, otherwise you'll lower the value of your backhoe to scrap value. JCB stuck a dragster engine in a backhoe to make the JCB GT. It works. JCB also built the worlds fastest diesel powered vehicle. It worked. JCB has millions of dollars to design and build this stuff. I think the diesel record holder cost in the $10,000,000 range. Dave

You can with a torch and a welder and a lathe and milling machine with a good machinist make anything work.You might even find something that will bolt right up.

There is a reason that they dont put car engines in backhoes though.They arent designed for that type of work.The tractor engine is made for torque where a car engine is made to pull as easy as it can.Tractor engines will have a forged crank,car engines will have a cast crank.Tractor engines will have a governor like somebody else said.Rods and crank and everything in a tractor engine will be heavier,and for the same size motor a tractor engine will hold more water so it can work in extreme conditions and not overheat.I have heard that when you put a car engine in a grain truck they overheat easy.Then there are 4 bolt main blocks compared to 2 bolt main blocks and better crankshafts with bigger journals and better rods and tougher pistons in a truck motor the same size like a 350 Chevy car engine compared to a truck engine.

If you are talking about replacing a 4 cylinder Diesel engine with a 6 cylinder diesel engine its probably going to burn more fuel,might put out enough more power to break something.You might have to try and find a bigger radiator for the 6 and it probably will rev higher and not have as much torque as you need.You might study long and hard at the specs and come up with something that will work,but it would most likely be the best to fix your diesel.It will be worth more when you fix your diesel than when you have a oddball engine setting in there thats doubtful if it will hold up.

Also you could look for a salvage yard that has a pump maybe.Also a lot of times people that claim an injector pump needs rebuilt are wrong.Bad old fuel can make a diesel run terrible and maybe not even run.Best thing to do on a diesel is see if there is a drain on the fuel tank and drain the old fuel out if its been siting a long time.Sometimes when you do that straight water will come out at first.

Before I condemned the engine I have,I would make sure what was wrong and what it would cost to fix it the cheapest way rather than buying a cheap junk yard engine.It could end up costing a lot to fix a junk yard engine nowdays if its got a cracked head or something like that.A cheap junkyard engine is usually one that was in a hard crash and something else is broke.I bought a engine like that one time and had to replace the block on a 390 Ford engine in my pickup because the back of the block was broke where the oil seal went in and oil started pouring out after I ran it a couple of weeks.You have too look it over good,hear it run,and even then you can get fooled.

Also right on this site here you can get an overhaul kit for the engine if its a 201 CI diesel from 310 to 366 dollars.Thats not so bad for a diesel engine.So for around 1000 dollars you could rebuild your engine if you can do it yourself.If you look long and hard at pump shops you can probably get it done cheaper if you even need it.If the sludge hasnt ever been drianed out of the tank,and the lines arent sucking air someplace,and you have good fuel,it might run better.
Also I dont know what the article you were reading was,but I have seen an article about a Ford 6000 tractor which used a 6 cylinder gas engine like what was in a car.You might be able to make something like a 6 cylinder car engine work in a 6000 Ford tractor.I dont even know what the difference is on them.I havent seen but maybe 10 of them in my whole life and Ive been all over the Midwest.Im thinking doing something like that with a 6 cylinder tractor engine,if it was a gas burner to begin with,would make a lot more sense than replacing a diesel engine in a backhoe with a gas burner or even a 6 cylinder diesel that you mentioned.

It can be done, and how well it works depends on the engine and how well you engineer the conversion.
I still farm with a pair of Oliver tractors (1950T and 2150) that I bought cheap with very low hours do to the unreliable factory diesel engines. I replaced the blown up diesels with propane burning 454 Chevrolet engines.
Summer fill propane was 25 cents a gallon 30 years ago when I built these tractors.
I built adapter plates, fitted the tractor flywheels and clutches to the chevrolet engines.
I fitted the 454 engines with small chamber 366 heads for high compression for efficient use of propane, fitted 8 qt truck oil pans and custom ground camshafts for maximum torque at low tractor rpms.(2400 max) Propane fuel systems are simple reliable IMPCO parts. At the time, total conversion cost was about $1000 per tractor, a fraction of what it would cost to replace the factory diesels that were so unreliable.
These tractors have been trouble free for all those years, only exception is the 454 will need $100 worth of new pushrods and rocker arms at around 6000 hours.
Quite a few tractors, combines, swathers came with factory installed automotive engines.

On a loader backhoe, I think space is going to be the biggest concern. An Oliver tractor has a lot of space for the engine where as a TLB doesn't. Any money you saved putting a larger gas engine in, would be spent on fuel. Dave

On that machine, the lack of a STRUCTURAL block would be my biggest concern. I don't think that particular hoe used a full frame but rather a subframe type arrangement... or at least enough that the engine was still a somewhat structural member if I'm not mistaken...
That would be my first concern.
Even the 'B' series Cummins engines, IIRC... have a structural block for AG/Industrial and a lighter block for the Dodge applications where the engine is not a structural member.

Rod