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Rock Solid Fab 5.7 Hemi Comanche

Team Willys

www.rocksolidfab.com
Location
Chattanooga, TN
Well... its been a while. A long While. But here I am again! I am going to go ahead and start this new thread to show off my newest project. And really this is to provide an idea as to how to execute this. I have done hours and hours of research and came up dry... as far as I know, this has never been successfully completed. I have found threads that were started saying "starting the hemi swap" and such, but the threads always die out quickly and never show any progress. Not this time.

The idea:

Build a mild Comanche for show and light wheeling use. This is undoubtedly a mall crawler. But, still an extremely nice build. The goal was to build it like Mopar would build it. The truck started out as a 91 4.0, 5 Speed, short bed. I did a complete restoration on it. Kept the drive train stock with the exception of swapping out the 35 for an explorer 8.8 and swapping in a non disconnect HP30 and adding 4.10 gears. We refreshed the interior, ditched the tan and swapped to gray, added a console and bucket seats. we swapped to a 97 up front clip and painted the truck a custom flare of rescue green. We built custom bumpers for it, and installed a 6.5 inch lift with our 3 link kit. 35" tires were wrapped around 2015 Rubicon wheels and installed too. It was a beautiful truck. But the engine bay was unimpressive. At shows I would never open the hood... Why? There was a stock 4.0 in there. I decided to do something nobody had done before. Or if they have, its not been photographed or documented. So I decided to swap in a 5.7 Hemi from an 06 Grand Cherokee with MDS delete.

I am currently finishing up the swap and reinstalling everything for the final time.

Only question...

With Photobucket no longer hosting pictures, how do I post them on here now?

Also, in the mean time, I have been documenting the build on my Instagram page @rocksolidfab if you want to get a sneak peak on the progress.

Once I figure out how to post pictures on here I will continue this thread with some really nice explanations and pictures to go along with it!
 
imgur works for me.

Just checked out your instagram that thing is dead sexy
 
Should be able to click on your pic in the album and then select the BBCode. Copy and paste.

Such as....

o7MdWs0m.jpg
 
The linked photo gallery gets up to here:

DX2AdBj.jpg


We need the rest of the pics...
 
Alright, my pet peeve is seeing a really cool thread get started and not get finished or gets abandoned. I am highly frustrated about Photobucket being dicks and wanting to charge $400 a year for third party hosting. I have loaded a bunch of pictures onto imgur so we will try to continue this. It may be a slow process as I only have a little spare time, but I will do my best.

Basically, I started by doing a ton of measuring. I wanted to make sure the engine would physically fit under the hood and between the frame rails. I quickly determined that it would fit between the frame and height shouldn't be an issue as long as I pushed the engine back. Also, we have our production 3 link long arm suspension on the truck, and I knew if I attempted to move the transmission from its factory location I was going to run into issues with fitment. The other benefits of not moving the transmission was that I could retain the stock shifters, linkages, and drive shafts, which also prevented any modifications to the console.

We removed the 4.0 and got everything stripped from the firewall forward, leaving the AX-15 bolted into the truck on the 3 link cross member. I then removed the 4.0 bell housing from the transmission and installed the bell housing from the 3.9 Dakota. This bell housing is a stock piece that works to bolt pretty much any small block LA or magnum engine to an AX-15, but it also fits the Gen 3 Hemi engines as well.

Once the bell housing was in place, I picked the hemi up with the hoist and slid it between the fenders. Obviously the firewall was in the way and the engine could not bolt up to the transmission, but I aligned it by eye as close as possible both vertically and horizontally so that I could get an idea as to what needed to go away to get the engine and transmission mated together. Whew... it was bad. The very center of the fire all would be ok, but other than that, both sides behind the heads would need to go away. Not only that, the steering shaft was behind the drivers side valve cover which would also prevent the engine from moving back unless I moved the shaft over which is what I ended uo needing to do.

Unfortunately Imgur takes forever to upload and I have hundreds of pictures. that will be needed to tell this story. I am going to pause here for now, and continue once I can post pictures along the way. Otherwise it will be difficult to follow the process.

But as stated by Wade, the truck is running and driving now. I still need to do a little tuning to finish it up, but its not anything major.

This is the first XJ/MJ Hemi swap that has been successfully pulled off while retaining all creature comforts such as A/C. Its also still 5 speed which is rare too. Most V8 swaps favor an automatic transmission.
 
<blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="ZePTvWw"><a href="//imgur.com/ZePTvWw">View post on imgur.com</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Alright...

So sorry for all the clutter. But I finally figured out how to make imgur work and have photos that are properly sized for viewing.

So on we will continue!

Anyway, back to where we left off with lining up the Hemi to the bell housing and all the stuff being in the way...

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As you can see... a lot was in the way.
 
I then began marking out the firewall where it needed to be trimmed to make room...

cbYgHqVl.jpg


Then I started cutting. First thing was to move the steering shaft over as much as possible.

iODtKmdl.jpg


Once it was moved over and tacked back into place, we continued with the cutting process until there was enough room for the Hemi's heads.

z18XeQVl.jpg


lm5RNsBl.jpg


SpjNwDsl.jpg


Then it was time to test fit the engine again, and this time hopefully bolt it to the bell housing to locate the engine in reference to the transmission.

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Once the engine and trans were bolted together, I was able to get an idea as to what was going to be required for engine mounts and fitting new sheet metal to rebuild the firewall and close it all back in.
 
I am happy to see you have figured out the pic thing and are continuing this thread.

Thank you.

Now we can all debate the pros and cons of a Hemi swap vs. an LS swap.

;)
 
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