i want to do the esportage 4.7 gear swap
 

i have the small axle, open diff on my 82. can i swap the sportage stuff in or does it only work with a 84/85 lsd. if i cant, i want to upgrade my axle and/or diff. any ideas?

also not lookin into dumping large amount of money

You can swap out the ring and pinion but you will still have a open differential which you can weld or you can find a small axle lsd . You can swap out to a gslse rear end and use the Kia third member which will bolt right in still no lsd. Or you can swap out ring and pinion to the gslse third member this will give you lsd .You can't put larger axle in your small axle rear end since they won't fit the differential different size different spline count . Also Kia ring and pinions don't fit perfect.

Cheapest, quickest way to get Kia gears into your car is to take the open center portion of your small axle third member and install it in place of the Kia open center section. You will be using the Kia third member housing and bolting it to your existing small axle rear end. Doing it this way you do not have to reset the pinion gear. You just have to set the backlash on the center section and ring gear. You will not have LSD, but you don't have an LSD section. You could do the same thing by putting a small axle LSD section in the Kia third member, but they are hard to find.

This is exactly what I have done on my ITA RX7, except that I used a small axle LSD rather than an open center section.

That exactly describes how I did it using a small axel LSD. Nice little bonus is that the Kia housing has a nice machined boss that makes setting pinion angle easier.