Node swaps from other vehicles not showing up

Hey guys,
so i swapped engines from one mod to another by editing the jbeam for engine
and it will show up IF i load the other car then reload the troublemaker, but otherwise i have an empty engine bay

what is the best way to get it so it shows every time? do i need to edit the .dae?
I did open it in blender and noticed there were two engine blocks in there, both transparent (despite editing the material)
so i guess if thats the case and i do need to edit the DAE, how do i make it so when i swap the engine it selects the right mesh (or node/flexbody) when changing configuration?

thanks for any responses, long time lurker here, but couldnt really find an answer to this particular question.

EDIT: i was also editing OGC (for personal use) and after saving the game crashed and now the map is reverted to the original form, despite being exported to the folder. any ideas what the hell just happened? working with the world editor in this game has been nothing but a "lost 10 hours of work at a time" experience for me. i would love to make maps for this game but can never seem to get it to work right. my files even say it was saved at the time that it crashed, so i dont know what that was about but it really killed my mood to attempt to mod this game any further as something always seems to come up after ive done considerable work on a map.

EDIT AGAIN: just realized my asset browser isnt loading all the way, and getting stuck at 38 percent. any reason for this? again...really kinda killing my vibe for map making which id really love to get into.