In article ,
Bruce L. Bergman wrote:

The "buy a complete donor vehicle with all the pieces you will need"
route is the only way to go, because almost every stupid system in a
diesel car is different. And don't buy the donor unless it's a pretty
close match - a F-350 in the same or newer model year of the same
body-style version (so you can swap body harnesses and instrument
clusters), and a similar GVWR.

....and I recall, from some research I did via signing up at one of the
online diesel-truck forums and asking dumb questions before I almost
bought one, the "same era" diesels from Ford have some "known issues",
at least to beware of. Not so bad as some...

Brakes are hydroboost not vacuum, fuel tanks and fuel piping system
has several significant differences, exhaust is all different, body
electrical is all different, etc.

It is, in short, a chore much bigger than swapping gas engines. or
rebuilding the one you have. Probably cost you more than you'd ever hope
to save on fuel, even as the price of fuel spirals up.

Having thought about doing something similar, I concluded that selling
the gas truck and buying a diesel truck (non-wrecked) was the only way
that made and sense to do the gas/diesel swap. My brother has done the
diesel/gas swap with some of the notoriously unreliable early Chevy
diesels, (which years? go to kelly blue book's site, and see where
having a diesel lowers the value...;-) and it's at least as much of a
bear. The people he was working for at the time were idiots, and wanted
it done, seeing "good truck bad engine" but failing to see the money
they were wasting on the extensive work.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by