[El_Oso]

Hi all, I'm getting ready to swap a T444e into my 96 powerstroke and thought I'd share the experience with all of you. I've seen a lot of posts asking about the differences between the 7.3 Powerstroke and the T444e but I haven't seen many posts about actually doing the swap so I thought this would be a good write-up.

The reason I'm doing the swap is that my engine recently developed some major blow-by and started running very rough, after some reading it sounds like one or more of my worn out injectors must have stuck open and washed the oil out of the cylinder.
After looking into rebuilt engines and seeing the price tag and reading about how unreliable remans can be I decided to source a good used motor to swap in and after a couple weeks of searching I found a good running T444e that was pulled from a 99 school bus with 137k on the clock. The guy that I bought it from was saving it as a backup for his tow truck but decided to sell it instead. $1800 later the motor is in my shop getting ready to swap into my truck.

 

[El_Oso]

Here's a couple pictures of the motor when I got it home.

 

[El_Oso]

And a few of the progress I've made on the truck so far. I've had the engine out of this truck once before and decided that I would pull the core support this time to make it easier getting the engine and transmission out.
Removing the core support is a job in itself but I think its going to payoff in time and effort saved on the rest of the job and I will be installing an intercooler while the truck is down so most of the front end needed to come off anyway.

 

[El_Oso]

Progress has been slow but I have the engine out of my truck and have the T444e stripped down to the long block and have been swapping parts over from the powerstroke. So far all of the bolt on parts have been different between the two engines including the oil pan so everything from the new had to go. This might not be the case for all swaps but it is for me since I'm putting a late 99 motor in an obs truck. Here's a list of everything I have found so far that is different.

- Oil pan, pickup tube and timing cover. (These are matched parts for 3 different year ranges and must be a matching set.) The T444e had a front sump oil pan vs the Powerstrokes rear sump pan.

- Wiring harness.

- Fuel system. Not sure if this is a standard sd fuel system or if it is specific to the T444e but everything but the mechanical pump is different from my old engine.

- Bell housing adapter. The T444e had an adapter for an Allison transmission and also had a crankshaft extension that had to come off. This is just bolted on with the flex plate bolts and came off with some gentle tapping with a hammer.

- Bell housing locating pins. The T444e pins are much shorter than the powerstroke and need to be replaced.

- Turbo and up pipes. The Turbo on my donor has the larger sd compressor housing with a 1.0 non wastegated e99 style exhaust housing. I may use the 1.0 exhaust housing and replace my collector manifold with one from an e99 to make it bolt up.

- All bolt on accessories.

- Injectors. The donor motor has split shot AD injectors for an sd truck that will not work in an obs. I will be replacing them with a set of baby swamps injectors.

In summery, the only thing I kept from the T444e were the block, heads and valve covers. Everything else had to go. I also ditched the mechanical fuel pump in favor of an electric pump.

 

[El_Oso]

Here's the two engines side by side before I started stripping them down.