Okay, so for a quick background, the Ford Lima block is well known for being put in the Pinto, 80s and 90s Rangers, 4 cylinder Mustangs, and all of the 80s "Turbo Fords" (i.e. Thunderbird Turbocoupe, Mustang SVO, Merkur XR4Ti, and a few others). The Turbo version's castings were much stronger, being made with a high nickel alloy, and were built in a totally different factory than the rest, located in Brazil. People have run 800+ HP and even more torque on this block without any sort of aftermarket block work. The things are stout!

Anyway, a fellow Turbo Ford enthusiast was stationed by his company in Brazil, and he says that although Ford has not used any variation of this engine in any of their vehicles since the 90s, the plant in Brazil is still in production, making a high nickel block, with even thicker cylinder walls than the original casting (several other turbo Ford enthusiasts have backed up his claims). He says that they are diesel powered, and they have "either Renault or Fiat" DOHC head on them, and they come in 2.3l, 2.5l, and 3.0l displacement.

Does anybody have any more knowledge of the diesel version of these engines, and does anybody know what they can be found in here in North America? There is rumor that some of the Genie Boom Lifts have them, but I have yet to varify that.

 

Only North America engine coming out of Brazil is the 3.9,4.5,5.9 Cummins. Their's a Deutz 2.3 from Germany,Iveco Motors 2.3,3.0 from Italy,John Deere 3.0 from Mexico, the rest of the small ones' are from Japan. Must be it's not being imported here.

 

I just found a post on a turbo Ford forum where another guy mentioned that he was making a delivery of electric motors to the Genie plant in Redmond, WA, and he saw a line of 6 of these Lima engines brand new, waiting to be installed. On his way out, 2 of them were gone, so Genie seems to be doing something with them.

I've been looking through Genie's service manuals looking for pictures of their engines, and I'm only part way through, although I haven't found anything yet. I've seen plenty of stuff with Perkins and Kubotas, and even some generators with the 12v Cummins.

 

After hours of searching (literally) I found out that Genie does indeed put what is called a Ford LRG-423 engine in some of their lifts, however, it is just a 2.3 SOHC carbeurated gasoline Lima engine.

So I hit a dead end with Genie... Still on the lookout. Maybe they're not brought to North America.