Hey so I've given up on my TH with all its leaky interior mouldy carpet and dieing ECU etc and looking at getting a 96 Altera that one of my mechanic's customers is selling and it's been maintained incredibly well apart from a few dents from other pricks who like to damage other peoples cars.... moving on

I'm curious as to whether I should keep the engine from my 3.5 as it's still in pretty damn good condition (just everything else that can go wrong with the body/electrical is) as the car is a 3.0L and done 236,000km.

As I said I test drove it and the car didn't miss a beat, log book has been filled out with every service possible.

Couple of things I would like to know:
If an engine swap is performed, will it bolt straight on to the auto 3.0L tranny? Mine is a manual.

Other than the usual things to look out for, is there anything specific from a 96 to look out for?

Lastly, the roof line is sagging bad and has been stapled up, any idea of the cost to fix it professionally? :)

Hi mate, not sure about the mechanical side of things but the roof lining you can fix yourself if you want to save money, its pretty easy to do, theres some videos on youtube on how to do it, I replaced the roof lining in my TS for about $100 which is about $40 for the spray on glue and about $60 for the foam backed material you need, you may even get it cheaper then I got it for, takes a few hours to do or less, I wont describe what to do just do a search on you tube would be better. easier to do then I thought, cheers

Why not put both motor and manual in

been driving a manual for nearly 8 years straight, besides my ecu is screwed up so I'd have to find a new part which is proving to be nearly impossible.

It will bolt up just fine.

I have th manual ecu's so don't know why is so hard.

You don't need to change ecu anyway, just use the one in the te as is

So if I drop a 3.5L in the tranny and ECU will work just fine?