My neighbor bribed me with a 12 pack to swap engines in his 93 YJ (his teenage son pulled a brake-drop, spit the rear driveshaft out and broke off the tailcone on the TC, then drove it 20 miles back home in 4L and blew the engine). He found a 95 XJ, wrecked but running, and we plucked the engine out of it a couple weeks ago. Finally got the time over the weekend to do the swap…..put it in the garage Saturday morning and pulled it out Sunday afternoon. Ran into a few snags, but all in all things went pretty smooth.
While we were pulling the XJ engine, he got a call that said he’d be heading back to the sandbox for his third rotation over, so he’s gonna be putting the YJ up for sale. If anyone’s interested in it, I’ll vouch for the engine work done to it (by me). It’s got a couple-inch body lift and some shackle lift (about 4” total), no sye but does have a TC drop in it. If anyone wants any more info or wants to come look at it, lemme know. He hasn’t set a price yet, but I do know his wife wants it GONE.
Couple pics of the fun:
Finally got started Saturday around 10 AM:
The blowed-up 4.0 :bawl: :
Got the front clip off and got goin’:
Dead soldier, out:
New soldier, going in later that afternoon:
Got it bolted in and called it a day:
Went back down Sunday morning and realized the water pump had to be swapped, did that, bolted everything else up and fired it up. It ran, surprisingly…. :thumbup:
Had a tranny cooler line leak and a fuel line leak (at the tank), fixed both, and drove it home:
Couple things I learned about the differences between a XJ/MJ and a YJ/TJ 4.0. The passenger motor mount brackets are the same but the driverside one is different (found that out the hard way), and the water pump snouts are different as well as the alternator/AC compressor brackets. As well, the flexplate differs from a 93 to a 95 so I had to swap that too.
Picked a good weekend to do the swap....it just started snowing when we pulled it out and drove it home. About a foot later, he's now taxi-ing his whole family to work and what not.