Putting a Toyota diesel in my Toyota Pickup

[Johnstra]

I have a 92 4x4 Toyota pickup I bought new when I lived in Achorage and I'm converting it to diesel. I bought a half-cut with the engine/tranny combo I wanted. It's a Toyota 1kz-te 4-cylinder engine w/ a 5-speed manual tranny.

First thing I did when I got the clip was get the engine running. Once I figured out how to hotwire the thing, it started right up. Couple of things I'm kinda worried about, though. It has an idle miss that kicks in after the engine has been running for a few minutes. It gradually gets worse as the engine warms up and then it eventually goes away. I suspect I'm getting air in the fuel, but I don't know why the problem goes away when the engine gets up to operating temp. The other thing that's bothering me is I'm worried the engine might have a blowby problem. When I take the oil fill cap off while it's running, I can feel a strong flow of air coming out of it. It's not smoke or vapor, though, just air. I pulled all the air intake plumbing off to check for excess oil (this engine has a closed CCV that routes from the valve cover to the air intake just in front of the turbo. There is only a little bit of oil in the piping - not what I'd expect from an engine with a blowby problem. Oh, and there's no grit or dirt in the intake piping to speak of.

Somebody I talked to said this particular engine is pretty durable but it has a problem with deposits forming on the ring lands. If there is a blowby problem, would it make sense to pull the pistons and clean them and the rings?

The engine has 77k miles on it.

Any thoughts on this problems? I'll be doing a compression test when my test kit comes in. Until then, anything else I should look at? As for the idle miss, I'm going to see if I can find any air leaks. I also bought a new fuel filter that'll go on as soon as it arrives. It's possible the injectors are dirty, so I might try running a strong dose of injector cleaner through the system to see if that helps.

Any input appreciated. Sure keeps me up at night thinking I bought a half-cut with a bad engine in it. Once the thing gets up to operating temp, it sure runs smooth, though.

-john