A friend of mine has a transit engine in a series 3 and he likes it. Not the worlds most powerful engine and pritty noisy but slightly better than the rover diesels and he gets very good economy from it. Its a ford so parts won't be hard to come by, and lets face it, the old Di doesn't let people down much.
As for the Isuzu I don't know much about it but I'd probubly avoid it simply because of the cost and avalability of spares for many jap motors. Some of them are rediculous! If you want to go down that route I'd do some homework on what the basic service parts will cost like fiters, heaterplugs... things like waterpumps/starter motors are probubly easyer to get from a spare engine. I'm sure its a good engine when it works and probubly won't go wrong often, but if something simple costs a few hundred quid and takes a month to arive I know what I'd think.
