Unless you drive it a lot it will take a lot of gas saving to cover the cost of a motor or trans swap. Use the money to buy a little car and use the van when you need a van.
This one is the winner.
Swapping motors or transmissions just to save money on fuel mileage is a vain effort. Even if you could increase your mileage by 4-5 more mpg (which is pretty questionable in my opinion, 1 or 2 mpg improvement is probably more realistic), at $5 a gallon gas, how many miles do you have to drive to break even with the cost of whatever you swapped in? Will you drive it enough miles to make it worth the effort?
I get it but where I live squeezing as many mpg's out of it would be worth it. It's 70 miles round trip when I go to the store! As for spending money on a motor or trans, I already have a 4 speed auto A518 out of the 94'... I'd only spend money on a rebuild kit and whatever else needs to be done. Not sure the condition of it, I towed it home...
Right now I would realistically only be able to fix up the 360 to make it more efficient... What does that entail and will it be worth it? I can imagine I can spend anywhere from $200 to $2000 just to modify the motor.
The whole point of all of this is to save money...
I expect someone to tell me that I should probably sell it and get a different.vehicle but right now I'm just too attached to the van since I've done so much work on it... I've had it for at least 8 years, lived in it for a while... I want to make it work for me!
