Doing a basic swap

[Blue93]

Hello - totally new to this forum and grateful for any guidance.

Daughter smacked her '92 Beretta base with 212k (she & her brother took on a F*ord Exploder and were OK) and we couldn't sell a thing off the car so instead I let them buy a '91 GTX ("89k")with same motor & tranny off EBAY for $388 with the intentions of swapping the motors.

The seller says there is a'bad head gasket' on the GTZ.

1) Should I try to fix the head on the GTZ and see what happens or
2) Just do the swap and fool with the GTZ motor later and
3) If I do a swap - swap the engine + transaxle as a unit ?

This will be my 1st FWD car swap.

Thanks in advance

[ikessky]

If they are the same engines, I don't see what you gain by doing the swap. If you fix the head gasket and that's what the problem was, then you have an engine with lower miles. Maybe I'm missing something?

[bszopi]

The GTZs came with the Quad-4s IIRC.

As far as the swap goes, I want to say things stayed the same in the engine bay between 91 and 92, but I might be wrong. If they did, you would be able to pull the old engine out and swap in the new (well... not really new compared to what you pulled out... ) engine quite easily. The biggest issue when it comes to stuff like this is motor mounts, accessories, etc. But since you have a complete donor car, all the parts you need will be right there.

Now we just new a Beretta guru (I just own one... don't know much of the history!) to tell you if there were any changes between the 2 years which would make the swap harder.

[Cliff8928]

91 and 92 are significantly different under the hood in the way things are mounted up... But it should all be interchangeable providing you have the same engine (although the trans is different if it's a 5-speed)...

The GTZs either came with a Quad4 and 5-speed (1990-1993) or a 3.1 and auto (1991-1993)

Cliff Scott
89 BerettaGT
89 Volvo740

[bszopi]

Ok, just re-read the initial thread and noticed the part saying "'91 GTX ("89k")with same motor & tranny". So as far as swapping the motors out, it should be fairly simple. You'll just have to pull all the brackets off of the old engine and put them on the new engine so it'll all bolt up correctly.

[Blue93]

OK thanks everyone - we got into it a bit over the last weekend -

1. We tried starting the '91 but che cranked, backfired and we gave up.
2. Correction: Its a '91 with a 3.1 . auto going into a '93 with same.
3. First thing I noticed was there was no upper motor mount on the '91 over the serpentine belt. We'll move it over from the '93.

Question: Is it easier to move the engine & transaxle together or just the motor and keep my fingers crossed about the '91 tranny?