89 grand wagoneer LS swap
Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2024 6:14 am
hey all,
this is my first jeep, but not my first LS swap. I am very comfortable with LS swaps and LS engines in general, but i dont know anything about jeeps. However my wife had been asking for one for a few years, and once i started researching I decided that, of course, it HAD to be a grand wagoneer
anyway this one came up for sale and it ran, drove, and had "decent" interior and fewer "inspection ports" in the body than many of the other examples i had looked at, so it came home with me:
it stops, steers, goes, and overall appears to have been maintained for awhile until it sat. the gauge cluster shows 490k. i am not sure if that is real.
thankfully, the engine slung so much oil around that the whole front end is pretty well preserved
of course my goal is to do this swap with as little budget as possible, so i started by ripping her guts out and selling the 360 and 727:
i used the money from selling the 360 to buy a 2000 tahoe that had been wrecked:
and that's about where she sits now. The general plan for the swap is
-use the engine, transmission, wiring harness, and fuse panel from the donor tahoe
-sell as much of the tahoe as i can to fund the swap
-use an NP243 transfer case (the tahoe came with an NP246 which is believe is full time 4wd, and in any case it has the "4 auto" function which requires abs and a lot of other things i wont be swapping to the jeep)
-use the accessory drive from the donor tahoe. power steering pump will bolt right up to the jeep power steering, and the rest of it works
-inline walboro 255 fuel pump (UNLESS the gas tank from the tahoe fits the jeep, in which case i'll just transfer the entire fuel system. i suspect that it's too wide, but have not confirmed yet)
-use as much of the tahoe exhaust as fits
-have not yet decided on a radiator. i am trying to find a factory radiator from some application that had electric fans, that is reasonably similar in size, but haven't yet. Closest thing i found was a chrysler town and country from around 2008, but that rad is a little smaller than i was hoping. when it comes down to it, i might just buy a brand new jeep rad that fits this thing, and adapt an e fan shroud to it at some point
-climate control will come later however i need to get the windows working (first step in any grand wagoneer project, it seems)
i havent yet bought the motor mounts, but i was looking at flyin' iron, and novak. does anyone have a preference between those two? personally i like the flyin' iron fab design better, but would certainly be open to feedback from others. i will probably just fab some bracketry to adapt the 4l60e to the stock grand wagoneer crossmember.
this is my first jeep, but not my first LS swap. I am very comfortable with LS swaps and LS engines in general, but i dont know anything about jeeps. However my wife had been asking for one for a few years, and once i started researching I decided that, of course, it HAD to be a grand wagoneer
anyway this one came up for sale and it ran, drove, and had "decent" interior and fewer "inspection ports" in the body than many of the other examples i had looked at, so it came home with me:
it stops, steers, goes, and overall appears to have been maintained for awhile until it sat. the gauge cluster shows 490k. i am not sure if that is real.
thankfully, the engine slung so much oil around that the whole front end is pretty well preserved
of course my goal is to do this swap with as little budget as possible, so i started by ripping her guts out and selling the 360 and 727:
i used the money from selling the 360 to buy a 2000 tahoe that had been wrecked:
and that's about where she sits now. The general plan for the swap is
-use the engine, transmission, wiring harness, and fuse panel from the donor tahoe
-sell as much of the tahoe as i can to fund the swap
-use an NP243 transfer case (the tahoe came with an NP246 which is believe is full time 4wd, and in any case it has the "4 auto" function which requires abs and a lot of other things i wont be swapping to the jeep)
-use the accessory drive from the donor tahoe. power steering pump will bolt right up to the jeep power steering, and the rest of it works
-inline walboro 255 fuel pump (UNLESS the gas tank from the tahoe fits the jeep, in which case i'll just transfer the entire fuel system. i suspect that it's too wide, but have not confirmed yet)
-use as much of the tahoe exhaust as fits
-have not yet decided on a radiator. i am trying to find a factory radiator from some application that had electric fans, that is reasonably similar in size, but haven't yet. Closest thing i found was a chrysler town and country from around 2008, but that rad is a little smaller than i was hoping. when it comes down to it, i might just buy a brand new jeep rad that fits this thing, and adapt an e fan shroud to it at some point
-climate control will come later however i need to get the windows working (first step in any grand wagoneer project, it seems)
i havent yet bought the motor mounts, but i was looking at flyin' iron, and novak. does anyone have a preference between those two? personally i like the flyin' iron fab design better, but would certainly be open to feedback from others. i will probably just fab some bracketry to adapt the 4l60e to the stock grand wagoneer crossmember.