i know this thread is a little old now but a tdi fitted complete (without changing diffs) took me 3.5-4 days the first time (in my old bitsa 88"), it was a quick and dirty job as the vehicle was my daily driver so i needed it back on the road, i did the swap in the middle of summer so i had maximum daylight hours and worked long and hard at it (this included cleaning and painting the chassis back to the bellhousing cross member)
it is useful if you can weld and have collected a few scrap exhausts from kwikfit and the like to make your own exhaust,50mm bore at a minimum (mine have no silencer), it's also worthwhile to "clock" the turbo to save cutting the inner wing panel
be careful of the routing of your lower oil pipe to the cooler as this can rub against the steering drop arm and evntually scrub through and lose your oil without any indication until you pull up and see a thick trail (it happened to me
)
i suggest lifting the engine a little by using thick washers above and below the engine mount rubbers (4x shock top washers) to reduce the frequency of hard strikes on the front axle with the front crank pulley (both my 88 and 109 have this happen occaisionally when laning or over big curbs) this can be very detrimental to the life expectancy of your engine/crank
there are several ways of fitting the radiator and intercooler but i prefer to use a TD5 intercooler as i personally think it makes for a nicer looking installation
i also cut down the 200tdi rad' surround to fit tightly around the rad' and the mount the TD5 i/c to the front of it, this requires a little trimming of the deflector panels on the back of the rad' panel to allow the rad' to be fitted snugly to the back of it, i also weld two mounts to the front crossmember to support the bottom of the rad'
a 90na airbox is slightly smaller than the disco one, i cut the legs off them for in the S2/2a and sit them on the passenger footwell, in the S3 i can stand them vertically on the timing chest and with a little adaptation can fit the banjo off the disco airbox to connect them up
engine to gearbox, all i do is remove the four studs that don't align around the bellhousing and in the 4 or 5 years i've been driving them i've had no problems (disclaimer, maybe i'm lucky)
the throttle linkage is easy as i use a S3 diesel cable linkage all of which except the bulkhead bracket is still available new, you can make the bracket easily, only other thing required is a large nut and bolt that fits through the cable anchor on the injector pump, i drill through this to allow the inner cable to pass freely and then a larger drill follows in for about 5mm to seat/locate the outer cable, i then run a 2mm thick cutting disc down the length of the bolt to make the required slot to get the cable inside it, slip it through the anchor and do the nut up, connect both ends up and hey presto, job jobbed (p.s. throw away the old Series throttle return spring as it's no longer required and makes for a heavy throttle)
they really are a simple conversion with a little thought, i personally don't see the di as a simpler conversion but each to thier own
