Thought I'd post this up here. I've been running this for about 4 months now and its been great I used the whole wiring harness from an 89 automatic from front to back. If you've got any questions I'll try to answer them as best as I can.
In my quest to make my 1984 Toyota pickup, I read about doing an EFI (Electronic Fuel injection) swap. At first I was happy with the carb, but with it acting up and running awfully, I wanted to do an EFI swap. I have a wrecked 1989 Toyota pickup 22re auto tranny that I used for parts on this swap. This swap seems complicated and something a trained professional should do, but that’s false. If you do it the right way, even someone with little knowledge of mechanical experience can do it. I’ve been wrenching on my own truck for over a year, first with my ’89 now with my ’84, so I felt up to the task. Wiring isn’t something I like, so my way around doing it was to replace the entire wiring front to back with the harness out of the 89. Parts I used for this were:
· Wiring harness from tail lights to body plug inside the cab under the passenger’s seat
· Cab wiring harness that connects to the rear harness
· Engine wiring harness
· Computer
· Gauge Cluster
· Upper intake
· Lower intake
· Knock sensor
· Cross over Air Tube
· Air Box
· Radiator*
· Thermo Stat
· Alternator bracket*
· Alternator*
· Metal Fuel Line*
· Fuel Filter*
· 1985 Toyota pickup gas tank
· Fuel Pump
· Fuel Sender Unit
· Charcoal Canister Bracket*
· Distributor
· Coil
· Items marked with a * means I recommend doing these but are not required for the swap
Steps
1. Remove all the old stuff. Start with dropping the tank and draining it. Drain radiator, remove the old stuff and, if it’s stuck, check to make sure you remove the bolt by the T-stat housing.
2. Tear your dash apart and remove all wiring.
3. Check all wiring before you install it.
4. Install the wiring you pulled from the truck you’re using. Start with the back tail light plug ins and work from 89 back.
5. With the engine bay clean of the charcoal canister remove fenders and remove the rest of the engine wiring harness.
6. For the alternator bracket you’ll have to undo two bolts that hold the engine mount to the block with the bracket in between them. Undo those and wiggle the bracket out. Then, have one or two people take a pry bar and put it in between the block and the mount. Push the block to the left as you slide the new alternator in. I went from an alternator with an external regulator that put out 45 amps to one that puts out 75 and the regulator is inside
7. Weld a nut to the engine mount- an M12x1.25 for the knock sensor. Weld it on the side CLOSEST TO THE WALL ON THE CAB, otherwise you have to cut, solder, and heat shrink and do other work (Don’t be like me)
8. Now comes the EFI install part. Put on the lower intake and then hook up the injector plugs. Install the upper intake and hook up the plugs. If you’re like me, I deleted the EGR and capped off other vacuum lines to help clean up my engine bay. If you do this, just tuck those plugs away. Now get under the truck and run the wiring over the transmission to where the O2 sensor is.
9. Then, cut a 2” hole in the fire wall on the passenger side to route the engine wiring harness though. Remove passenger kick panel to place computer in there. At this point, I installed the dash wiring harness and put the dash back together after checking everything. Then, reinstall the seat and kick panel.
10. After you have ran the back harness to the plug inside the cab and plugged in the wiring harness for the dash then the wiring harness from the engine bay to the computer, you can install the gas tank, reuse your old filter neck if you can. Ones from other years may work but the one from an ‘89 Toyota pickup will not.
11. When installing the gas tank, I used a jack to jack it up in place and then bolted it up. Don’t forget to reinstall the bracket for the skid plate; otherwise you’ll have to remove bolts again. I used the sender unit from then ‘89 and ended up shorting it too much as when the gas tank is full it only reads ¾ full. I’ll update the correct length to shorten it when I have my bed off to install my flat bed. A 17 gallon ‘85 Toyota pickup tank will fit where your 14 gallon tank was.
12. The light plugs for the ’89 and ’84 are the same but you will have to splice in the turn signal lights and marker lights. Also, don’t forget to hook up the three prong wire for the brake lights. For the hazard switch, I used the one from the ’89 as well because the plug for the hazard switch to work with the vehicle off is not wired into the connections under the steering column cover like on the ’84 Toyota.
13. The thermostat is 195* and you might as well do all the upper radiator hose, the lower radiator hose and the metal hose to the block radiator hose.
That should cover most of the swap. All the parts you’re wondering about beside the simple how to install a radiator questions. I would also recommend that if you’re doing this swap to do the timing chain and water pump while you’re in there as you have all the room you need to do it. Be careful with the knock sensor pigtail, as for the 22re’s that aren’t sold by Toyota and is a part of the engine wiring harness. If using an automatic transmission engine wiring harness on a manual transmission truck, just splice the wires together or you can use a momentary switch to start your truck. This switch will not need to be run to your battery either and can go wherever you like. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being an “everyone can do it” to 10 being “you need to be highly trained,” this swap is about a 4. If you do it the way I did it, there is no splicing and it’s all unbolt and rebolt up. If the truck will not start, remove the fuel pump from the tank and put it in a bucket of gas and see if it’ll start then.
