I have a 95 Flare Side that was rear ended by a drunk driver and is a total. I am going to buy it from insurance company for salvage for the good parts it contains. I have the opportunity to purchase a 96 Centurion that needs an engine (same drivetrain as my Flare Side). I want to swap my good drivetrain into the Centurion, and I want to put the Flare Side's 40/20/40 front seat in the back of the centurion. I'm sure there are some other things I'll swap but for now my questions are:
1. I'm planning on pulling my engine, trans & transfer case to swap into the Centurion. Will my 95 motor run on the 96 computer or will I need to swap it?
2. I realize the regular cab & crew cab floor pans are different. Will the 40/20/40 front seats bolt into the rear of the crew cab, will I need to switch the seat frames, or will I need to make mounts for what I want to do?

 

The 95 and 96 engine electrical systems are completely different. The '96 has a different EGR system, and has a crankshaft position sensor on the front of the engine.

You can make your 95 engine work, but you'll have to do a few things. You'll have to swap the '96 front-cover onto the '95 engine, along with the crank position sensor and the crank trigger wheel. You will also have to move all the '96 emissions components and engine wiring harness over to the '95 engine.

It's nothing particularly hard, but it will take an hour or two of time to do.

 

Is the Centurion an F150 or something heavier like an F250? If it is based on an F150 it has the OBD2 EFI system which is totally different than what your truck has so follow Lead Heads advice and put everything from the '96 motor on the '95. If however the centurion is based on an HD truck and it's not a California spec model it will have the OBD1 SD system on it, that means your '95 motor will go in without a lot of work, all you have to do is remove the upper intake and put the '96 engine harness on it from the centurion.

 

You would need the COMPLETE engine harness and ECM from the 95. The 96 should be MAF and is a different setup from the SD(95).

As for the seat swap, it would be a direct swap

 

Thanks all!
Currently the Flare Side is @ Clemson w/ my son, & it's still drivable to get it home in a week or two. It was already a project so I KNOW they will total it and as long as I get out of it what I have in it ($3K) I'm fine with that. Picked it up in Dec '15 cheap & spent some $ making it a sound driver. The big appeal was that the mechanicals were good & solid, NO leaks in drivetrain at all, good compression, & trans & transfer case serviced by a trans friend who said it all looked new for 160+K miles.
The appeal of the Centurion is that it needs an engine and it has a 5.8L like the Flare Side, and its also cheap.
Figured there were model year or emission differences but being out of the business for a while & MY truck being a diesel I don't keep up on all the gas stuff anymore, and I forget a little more each year (ha ha) of what I used to know/do.
Again thanks all for fast replies.

 

Why not just repair the truck that got hit? If you can drive it then it can't be too screwed up.

 

I'd love to keep & fix the truck that got hit but the laws in PA aren't that simple. My UNDERSTANDING is that first I must purchase the truck back from the insurance company that is paying the claim, the vehicle will have a salvage title issued from the state, it must immediately be removed from service until the vehicle is repaired and passes a state safety inspection, state/federal emission inspection, and receive a certificate of reconstruction by a state approved inspection station dealing in reconstructed vehicles (different from safety inspection but the shop MAY do both), then all the paper work must be submitted to the state with copies of all receipts so that a new reconstructed vehicle title may be issued, and lastly have almost no resale value (although I'm not doing it for resale). Went through a similar situation a few yrs ago when our 94 Taurus got hit by an underinsured driver and the car was a "total" but still driveable & still passed inspections. I attached some pics of truck, bumper & quarters are toast. Thought I'd find a used bed or quarters but around here they want too much. Found a used Flare Side for $900 w/ blown trans but that went, so came across Centurion for $1500 low miles, clean, no rust, blown motor.

 

This...Ian has the magic formula here

 

IMO the big screw up here is that your insurance caught wind of this at all. IMO you should've guilted whoever hit it into paying for repairs off the books (e.g. "write me a check right here right now and I don't call the pigs") and driven off into the sunset with your new bumper and some paint. Now you're talking about buying another truck and swapping drive trains around because of all the red tape involved in getting the first truck back on the road. Even with the difference between the insurance payout and the buyback price you're not gonna have enough money to come out ahead if your buy and swap the Centurion.

 

95/96 TC are the same. Only difference is the bracket that holds the crankshaft sensor gets swapped over and the timing pointer is different.

As mentioned above put the 95 block in the 96 and transfer everything electronic over to it. The cams are the same. Its still distributor ignition system.

 

**** sidewards: First off I really didn't want to get into the particulars of the accident, been there before & used to be in the auto body business (11 yrs ago now). My son was driving the truck @ college in SC and was hit while sitting at a light from behind @ 25-35 mph (as police reported) and thank God was not injured. The DUI driver sped off to cause more damage before being caught by police & being arrested for DUI/DWI, causing multiple accidents & leaving the scenes of multiple accidents. On top of that my insurance isn't involved other than being notified by my son as required by SC state law for any vehicle accident. So that threw the entire incident into the "system" and once your in you can't get out.

As of right now as a parent and a responsible individual I want the SOBs insurance to pay me every penny that I can get out of them as that is what insurance is for, especially when their irresponsible insured's guilty as hell. I hope he goes to jail (for more than the 48 hrs they held him), I hope he gets help for his drinking problem and I'm thankful no body was hurt or killed. But it is what it is and we must move forward. I've already come to the conclusion that it is a total loss as I showed pics to a few shops around home & they all agreed that the used parts and labor w/o paint exceed the "value" of the truck. If I don't take the money, how much will I put out of pocket to fix my truck ??? If I buy it back (usually 10-20% of the value of the vehicle) that leaves my a donor & money to fix it or find another. But the real issue is I've found another vehicle for a good price that I could use my drivetrain in.

Sorry, not to be a (fill in the blank) but the insurance issue has been an ongoing discussion/argument since the accident occurred. My son's former Scoutmaster is a local lawyer and has offered his services to us (free of charge as a courtesy) when the time comes to make some phone calls if/as needed to make sure things go in our favor and as smoothly as possible. The truck will be home by 5/1/16 and the actual settlement of the claim will begin.

Don't get me wrong I more or less agree with your comments about insurance especially when they want to total a vehicle that their insureds damage and are still drivable & not difficult fixes for a shop or a home mechanic. I also see their side of it after having worked on cars that were "salvaged" improperly by body shops or owners who had no clue what they were doing (ie: clipped or halved cars that were unsafe after repairs made).

To everyone else sorry for the 'rant' and thanks for the help about the swap.

 

Make sure and keep the hard bed cover and tailgate! They are hard to come by parts being that they are for flare Side!

 

The point was that it's a truck that as far as your insurance cares isn't worth anything and isn't safe (one of their biggest priorities is making sure their customers drive things in which people don't get injured, paying for someone to be in the hospital is big $$) and therefore the less insurance knows about it the better.

Obviously in this particular case that's not really possible...

 

good point Sdowdle541, thanks