Full Size Jeep Network

Its official, ive lost my mind and gone to heaven.

I bought my chief from California to avoid as much body work as possible. I have enough experience in body work to know its a total pain in the butt.
Shipping it to upstate New York was a painful process. Ready legistics did the shipping. It took them 5 weeks to get it shipped. They were the lowest price i could find. You get what you pay for i suppose.

Now for the meat and potatoes.

The goal:

To make my 79 chief reliable and powerful. Reliable enough to be a daily driver, powerful enough to handle novice level trails, climbs and long distence camping trips.

How you ask?

Replace the drivetrain with a 2002 fuel injected LQ4 6.0 engine, a 97 4l80e transmission from a suburban, and a np205 transfercase.

This is the first forum ive ever posted to in my life so please be patient with my ability to post correctly and my terrible grammer and spelling issues... thanks

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The truck is in relatively good condition on the outside. Mostly clean except some surface rust behind rear tires

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The inside is a different story.

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So fist thing ive done is remove most of the interior. I was expecting some holes in the floor boards and the bottom of the doors. The bottom of the doors are in good shape. The floorpans are completely shot. I'll be putting floor pans soon.

I could use some advice on where to get decent floor pans. And sorry about the double posting. If i knew how to delete them i would.

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Welcome to the madness.

Check out BJs Off-road for the floor pans.


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Welcome Indeed!
The floor doesn't look too bad considering the Jeep is 39 years old. You have a lot to work with there. I look forward to progress updates.

From the pics, it looks,like you did well in selecting a candidate. The floors are not difficult, and you have solid rear flares, etc. So you saved yourself a lot of headache there! Looking forward to the build, and welcome!

That truck is awesome. I like the power plant choice as mine is going to be the same Lq4 4L80e and NP205.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yes im very happy with the condition of the body minus the floor pans. And i like the term power plant drivetrain ha. Its going to be a beast when im done!

Its pretty difficult to find time to post frequently but i think i can at least do it once a week.

Ive been working on the wiring harness because i want to bench start the engine and get most of the harness done including the digital cluster before i install the drivetrain.

Big shout out to Lt1swap.com for directions on the whole wiring process including how to build a new relay center. What a great source of information he has.

Im at the point where everything is labled and organized fairly well. I have the fuel pump relay and pcm constant 12 volt wires all done.

So i simulated a "turn the key on situation" with hopes of getting my pcm and fuel pump to turn on. At first it didnt work. The reason being the fuel pump relay is activated by a pcm wire and not by a ignition wire. So "key on" doesnt send power to the relay. Power is sent to the pcm and the pcm will not activate the fuel, spark or starter systems untill it knows its in park or neutral.
The pcm knows if its in park, reverse, neutral, or drive by a cobination for ground and "no volts" coming form 4 switches in the Park neutral safty switch/ PNP switch or range switch.
The pcm print out from LT1swap.com shows these 4 wires as
PRND A, PRND B, PRND C, PRND P.
So to tell the pcm the trans is in park so that it will activate the fuel pump relay signal wire i had to ground D and A wires.

It was a pretty great feeling figuring that all out in about 15 min. I guess 9 years of being a mechanic pays off sometimes. haha

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I've made some progress over the last few weeks. I was far enough with the engine harness to attempt to start it for the first time. After watching a YouTube video of a guy's engine flipping upside down when attempting to bench start it, I decided to re-enforce the Harbor Freight engine stand "not proud of the work " but it'll hold. I also made a make shift fuel cell out of a 5 gallon bucket and a 97 blazer sending unit/ fuel pump. The whole set up is pretty hacked i know, but itwas fast to set up and will work. The engine fires up and dies immediately. after doing some research I realized that its a security issue within the PCM. Im sending it to brenden at lt1swap.com for reprogramming. I located a 4l80e out of a 97 suburban that had been sitting for 10 years. This truck was a nightmare. It's brakes were locked up so it took an hour to get the truck in or out of the shop. It was more rust then truck so i took the heaviest rust shower of my life. 3 hours later it was free from the beast. I scavenged ac system cooling system and some odds and ends and scrapped the thing.
I got excited about bolting the 4l80e trans to my np205 tcase and found the tcase factory adapter interferes with my transmission. So i plan on trimming the ears off of the adapter and welding up some kind of bracket to replace it. Unless some one has a better idea Here are some things i could use some help with.

Bracket or adapter for tcase to trans.

How can i integrate the ac system from the suburban to my 79 chief facotory system.

And will the 97 blazer sending unit be enough to power my 01 Silverado 6.0l engine.

Thanks for reading.

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Hey welcome to the insanity!

I am doing a similar swap but having a shop do it for me. 6.0/4l80e/atlas t case.

Check with Advanced Adapters for the tcase to trans issue.
The 6.0 needs about 58psi of fuel pressue I think, so check online to see what the 97 unit puts out.

I have some home made motor mounts if you are interested let me know.

Wade

I'll be doing a similar swap in my 81 cherokee but will be using the 5.3l. For the fuel regulator just use the corvette filter. It's a filter and regulator all in one. Worked great for me in my 260Z.

Thanks for the suggestions guys ill look it to them. I disassembled my 6.0 and found a tun of sludge, bad bearings, and stuck lifters. So i had rings, springs, bearings seals etc, ect basicly resealed the whole thing. 1800 dollars later i finally bemch started it. And man what a great feeling that is! Sent from my SM-J727P using Tapatalk