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Hi All, first post. New to Comanches but not Cherokees. Bought my 97 XJ stock in 05 and it's now a wrinkled, caged, one ton, rig on sticky tires. Current daily driver is a 1980 Mercedes 240D 4spd. Lowered 2", 2.88 diff swapped for the stock 3.69, pump tuned and timing advanced. Yes, this is a 64hp/100tq motor and I'm guessing I may have added 15% to that on the high end with those mods but... it makes peak torque at 2400rpm and is a sweet highway cruiser. Gets 35mpg on my 60 mile round trip commute. It is rusty though... and a little too far gone to save. So, I have decided to combine my love of unibody Jeeps, manual transmissions, and mechanical diesels and swap the motor into an 86 2wd 5spd longbed. I am hoping that swapping the motor into a vehicle slightly less aerodynamic but a little lighter will keep my fuel economy number right about where it is now. Back in December, a friend and I turned and burned from CT to TN and back in 28hrs to get the truck. It supposedly ran, but I never even bothered. The driver floor is rotted through but there is not a speck of rust anywhere else on the truck. I was able to acquire a motor to use for mock up from a local guy. Pretty much just a long block left exposed to the elements for years. This allows me to keep driving the Mercedes in the meantime. Using the Koch MercedesDiesel4x4 adapter kit. Next up, I adapted the Jeep alt bracket to the Mercedes alt bracket. My goal through the whole build is to use as many factory Jeep components as possible. With the alternator, it also simplifies wiring. This past weekend, a few buddies came over and we got the 2.5 out and mock up motor bolted to the transmission. The first issue I ran into was firewall clearance with the exhaust manifold. OM615 diesels use the same bolt pattern and port locations on the head but have a center dump so I ordered one on ebay. I used the passenger side stock Jeep mount unmodified and tried to do the same with the driver side but it wasn't possible due to clearance issues with the injection pump. I modified the stock bracket to move the mount back about 2". Next up is front oil sump clearance issues. A big bonus to using a 4 cylinder rather than 5 cylinder (and a 2wd rather than 4wd) is that it appears I will be able to notch the front side of the oil pan, modify the tie rod, and build a new trackbar and then maintain stock height. I want a 100% stock appearing truck and was very opposed to lifting the truck like most do in order to gain clearance with these parts. After that, cooling system and exhaust. Will keep the pictures coming. Thanks for reading!