Hello forum,
I have had some discussion with 4runnernomore on the the kia site regarding the 2.3 litre engine.Or more importantly the one I have built as Chris has already mentioned I have used the the r2 diesel crank.
I used that because its the strongest being forged steel as opposed to the cast iron variants of the same stroke.The other benefits were the timing dowel is in the same position as the sportage crank and has the same bolt pattern as the sporty.


The timing gear has to be removed from the diesel crank I used a spark eroder(edm machine) to split the shrunk on gear.I had read in a different post that a careful bit of disc grinding does the same trick.The diameter that the gear sat then was milled down to make two drive flats for the oil pump.The only real drama was spark eroding oil holes though the bearing journals as the the r2 crank has angular oil holes from main crank journals feeding the nearest cylinder journal bearing.I used standard sporty plan bearings as opposed to grooved bearings that the r2 crank used .
I,ll fill out a few details on next stages tomorrow night.
regards Dave