Jeep Project "Culpepper" 5.2L V8 Swap

[gorillaxj]

glad you got it going. I bet that v8 will be way better then the 4cyl.... good thing you had a fire extinguisher handy...

 

[Slangy]

I forgot to post this picture earlier. This is the cluster **** I was having to trouble shoot when it wouldn't start the first time. I was trying to keep it real nice and organized but when I took it out of the Jeep after it wouldn't start, things got a little messy

Let's just say I am glad I can have my kitchen table back

 

[LonnieC]

Awesome that you got it going! Now just get it buttoned up for Moab

 

[Bart]

That looks like lots more than a one beer job.

 

[Slangy]

That looks like lots more than a one beer job.

Yeah it was more like 1 beer per wire and one beer per splice, with all those wires it added up quick. I think I have spent more on beer doing this than I have on the entire project

And just to clarify, we don't use camping chairs at our dinner table, that was brought in from outside when it started raining/snowing.

 

[RockChucker]

that is awesome! i'm impressed with your patience to get the wiring done yourself. you now have a killer jeep that has some ponies under the hood now. not a bunch of angry squirrels haha. you'll have to post up your mpg numbers in a few months after the thrill has worn off and your foot isn't in it all the time. i bet it is pretty similar if not better than what you were getting with your 4 popper.

 

[Slangy]

that is awesome! i'm impressed with your patience to get the wiring done yourself. you now have a killer jeep that has some ponies under the hood now. not a bunch of angry squirrels haha. you'll have to post up your mpg numbers in a few months after the thrill has worn off and your foot isn't in it all the time. i bet it is pretty similar if not better than what you were getting with your 4 popper.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I am still pulling my hair out due to the fact I am still having some issues. But I still have $700 in my pocket

The issue I am running into now is one of my injectors on the passenger side is pulsing way high, high enough you can hear the electrical current coming to it, it is pumping so much gas that it spits gasoline out the headers which ultimately caused my small flare up the other night. I tested the reisistance in my injectgor plugs last night and a couple have no resistance, others have some resistance and the problem plug on the passenger side has about 10 times the resistance that the others have. Not sure what is causing this but I am determined to figure it out.:chris:
If anyone has any idea please help me out before I pull all my hair out. Are all the plugs supposed to have the exact same resistance or will they each vary due to the fact they spary in fuel at different times.:-\

Another question for you guys is this, when I place the radiator and the taurus fan in it is hitting the threaded post where the stock fan should go. It is not much, maybe a half inch. Would it be okay if I cut that threaded post off since I will not be putting on the stock fan?

Got some work done on the transfer case last night, I think I can have the 23 spile input from the durango case swapped over by tonight and get it all bolted up and the drivelines put back in place so I can see if this pig will move with the new automatic.

If all goes well I will have it all pieced back by Sunday and at the muffler shop on Tuesday.

 

[Slangy]

So I have been a little hesitant to tear into the two transfer cases because I just didn't want to run into any problems and have to spend more money to innerchange parts. Not that waiting would magically make things better, but it did. When I tore into the Jeep transfer case I found where my loud banging noise had been coming from when I would put the Jeep in drive or start to backup. The chain seems to have stretched, and the slack of the chain makes a loud pop noise everytime you put power to it. The ATF that was still in the case looked horrible. Hopefully after all this I will have a case with no problems.
Then I broke into the Durango case and I was pleased with what I found, the chain was tight, and bigger than the chain from the Jeep. Also the gears on the input and output shaft were larger. Not that this case is a beast but it will be nice to have a little stronger case until I can get something better. I took a moment to look at both cases and figure out what the best way to swap parts would be. I came to the conclusion that I would treat this like a reugular SYE install. I popped off the snap ring from the stock output shaft and slipped the gears from the stock shaft onto the SYE shaft. Slid it into place and that was all she wrote. Once everything was pieced back together I took the little bracket off the Jeep case that attaches to the shift linkage and swapped it to the Durango case, the base of the bolt is a rectangular shape, I took the bracket from the Jeep, rotated it180 degrees to the same position as it was on the Jeep case and bolted it on.
I now have a transfer case with the proper 23 sline input and SYE, now all I have to do is bolt it up to the transmission and bolt the drivelines back on.

 

[rholbrook]

Well????? Come on Chaz, finish the story here. There are some of us here with 97 TJs with 2.5Ltrs waiting for the end of this one.

 

[Slangy]

Well????? Come on Chaz, finish the story here. There are some of us here with 97 TJs with 2.5Ltrs waiting for the end of this one.

Okay, sorry to anyone who was following this. I was running out of time in a serious way and did not have time to take additional pictures or even figure how I was doing what I was doing.

But I am glad to say that I finished it up the afternoon before we were leaving. When I took it to my wifes uncle who owns Master Muffler in Ogden I had them do some last minute things to help me make it on our vacation. Nothing major just things like exhaust, finish the power steering, wire my taurus fan from the diagram I came up with, wire my overdrive, fix a pinout I missed and a few other small items.

Let me give you a small run down on some things I had to do to finish it all up. I replaced the clutch and brake pedal out with one from a Cherokee and I must say I hate it, it sits to far to the left side and is hard to get used to. I am going to take the plasma cutter and cut the clutch pedal off mine and put it back in. I took a trans cooler off of a Ram 3500 and bought some aluminum flat bar and installed it because I opted out on using the trans cooler built into the radiator. I had to cut a section out of the brace on the bottom side of the hood so that it wouldn't hit the intake.
As for the transfer case everything worked great, lined up perfect without any driveline changes. I had to combine both of the transmission mounts and turn them into one to get it to hook up to the skid plate, but a few holes drilled out and it worked flawlessly.
I used the stock radiator overflow, I zip tied it in and it worked great until it fell against the pulley and wore a big ass hole in it. But nothing a little plastic resin in the parking lot couldn't fix. I will take some finished pictures so you can see how it turned out.

All in all the trip was a success, good times noodle salad. My fan cooled everything down wonderfully. I bought a automatic thermostat from autozone for 19 bucks and stuck the probe in the upper readiator hose and the engine stayed nice and cool at 190 degrees the whole trip. I didn't have time to outboard my shocks so I took the shorter shocks off my other TJ and used them for the weekend. But I did get my outboard brackets made, using the poly performance brand as a prototype, at least I have another trip to do for this spring. My father in law sent me down to a family members farm where he said he had a 1979 ford f250 camper special I could have, I about went nuts, That would have the HP 60 I wanted, and for free. Went down there to check only to find out it was a f150 with the HP44

Took the Donorango down to the junker today and had it scrapped, all the parts are sold off it and no more ugly Durango in the driveway. After adding up all the money i spent in the swap, I was surprised to find out I actually made $227, give or take $75 for lost receipts and I got a new V8, auto tranny and beefier transfer case. Here is a price break down of what it all cost.

5.2L Donorango Swap

Sold
Tires - $300
Spare Tire - $50
3rd Row Seat, seat belts and panel - $120
Catalytic Converter - $25
Roof Rack - $40
Power Steering Gear Box - $40
Rear Passenger Door - $50
Miscellaneous scrap - $20
Crappy wheels & tires $80
3 Doors - $100
Front & Rear Seats - $125
Rearend & Bumper - $150
Scrap The Rest - $202

TOTAL= +$1,302 - PAID -$1,500

Bought
Block Hugger Headers - $155.90 with shipping
Header Paint - $8.49
Idler Pulley - $28.84
Water Pump - $50.20
Bosch Wire Set - $38.46
Automatic shifter - $100
Alldatadiy year subscription - $34.90
Engine Mounts - $180
Shift Bezel - $5.34
Autolite Platinum spark plugs - $25.56
Misc. Fluids, silicone etc. - $7.47
Fan belt - $28.84
Taurus Fan - $27.51
Relays & Fuses - $85
Trans Cooler - $10
Exhaust & Misc. Finish Ups - $519.80
Red Top Optima - $148.51
Auto Fan Thermastat - $19.22
Misc. Items – Fluids etc. - $200

TOTAL= -$1,674

Sold off Jeep
Engine - $300
Transmission - $300

TOTAL= +$600
Grand Total of +$227

If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask me, I would be glad to give you some advice from what I learned on this project.

 

[rholbrook]

Nice job. It will be interesting to see what kind of mileage you are getting. All in all, how did it run for you?

 

[Slangy]

Nice job. It will be interesting to see what kind of mileage you are getting. All in all, how did it run for you?

It ran really good, better than I expected. The brake pedal seemed to be bottoming out, so I had to really push on it to get it to stop. I couldn't have asked for anything more, and for the price of the swap I can't complain. I has great power, crawls a ton slower than the 4 banger with a manual, I actually felt safer not having to go faster to keep the engine from dying. I also had a check engine light come on, have no idea what it is but it didn't efect any performance nad nothing died on me. I did find out when I was down there that my speedometer was not working, I think I screwed up the speedo gear in the transfer case but I will have to check into that as well. But for the most part everything went great.
You should do it, you know you want to. It would have been better if I had more time so that I wasn't in a panic. But I do it every year so nothing new.

 

[Slangy]

Here is my schematics for the 2 speed Taurus fan. I had to color code it so that it matched the colors of the wires I was using. I also had to draw it so that the relays, wires and switch were represented like they would be under the hood. I was having a melt down after looking at all the schematics for the wiring and I couldn't seem to make sense of everything. The Green wires are the 8 gauge wire and blue is 14 gauge. I used a standard 30 amp relay but had to use a 75 amp relay from napa, I can't remember the part number but I will look if anyone needs it.

 

[RockChucker]

if your speedo isn't working, i would bet that is your engine code. when i swapped in my rubicon tcase, the pigtail was a different plug than my 97 TJ, so i drove a couple days before i got the right plug, the check engine light came on. it ran fine, but the light was there nonetheless.

good work. how about that? making money on a v8 swap! sweet.

 

[Bart]

Glad to hear and you've got me thinking hard about this. That speedo gear just needs to be twisted a bit to work, but you prolly know that already.

 

[Slangy]

Glad to hear and you've got me thinking hard about this. That speedo gear just needs to be twisted a bit to work, but you prolly know that already.

You should go for it. Someone with your background will be able to do it a lot easier and faster than me. Yeah when I was putting that t-case back together I was in a hurry and just rammed the thing in, I had a feeling it didn't work when I put it back together. It would be to good to be true if everything worked the first try

 

[Slangy]

Well the Jeep has been sitting in the garage for the past week and I noticed I have a leak coming from the power steering pump. I could not pin point the exact location from where it was leaking, so I wiped it all down and let it sit. An hour later I came back and noticed it was not leaking from the hose but from the fluid reservoir. I looked and noticed that there is a bolt that has worked it's way out allowing fluid to leak out. I have to take off the belt and the pulley to get to the bolt and tighten it up.

Another thing I have to do to have this completely finished it rewire the light that sits underneath the shift bezel so at night I am not guessing which gear I am in. This wasn't a big priority the first time around but it would be nice to get it done now that I don't have a tight deadline. There was not a light there originally since it was a manual and not automatic. But I did however take the wiring and lights from the cherokee when I pulled the shifter and other junk.

Here is a crapy cell phone pic of how nicely the engine fits inside the engine bay of the TJ. I wish I would have taken a picture before I took it out and got it all dusty and dirty. Don't poke fun at my fancy zip tie intake holder. I still have to make a bracket that holds it into place real nice and tight. I will just use parts off my old Airaid intake and weld the brackets to my tubing and bolt them into place. I also have to wrap that nice big white wire with some split loom so it doesn't look so ghetto fabulous.

 

[Slangy]

Yesterday was a big day for Sgt. Culpepper. In the past I have always had to take the back roads when I wanted to go anywhere because the option to get on the freeway and do a normal speed was out of the question. Well last night I was waiting at the stop light waiting to get on the freeway for the first time in years. I must say I was a little nervous. The light turned green and off we went, up the on ramp and then merging into the lanes. Wouldn't you know it, keeping up with traffic the whole way. I couldn't believe it, it was a dream come true.

 

[rholbrook]

Chaz, where did you get the durango?

 

[Slangy]

Chaz, where did you get the durango?

I found it on KSL in the non-running cars section. It was in Layton. Went to check it out and the battery was shot, put a jumper on it and got it running, went around the block and told the guy I was going to go get my trailer and bring him cash for it.
If you watch the non-running section you may be able to find one that was just wrecked and has no engine problems, kind of like the Donorango.

The thing I liked most is that the Durango and Dakota's have the beefier NP231 which makes it a quick swap. All you have to do is swap in your SYE short shaft and SYE parts and it bolts righht up.