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Not so quick flip... 88/99 swap


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I figured I'd start a thread for the 88 mj that we are working on. This will serve to help me keep track of all of the things that have been done to the truck and help as a little advertisement as the truck will be for sale once the swap is complete. I had picked up a 97 and a 99 xj to part out when this truck came up for sale in Belin NM, so after a discussion with my partner we decided to pick it up for a swap build. I've had quite a few xj's and a few mj's in the past, and this will be my third late model mj swap.

 

The truck is a 88 4.0, ba10, 2wd dana 35, when we picked it up it has a 3.5" lift on it and it was sitting on jk rubicon rims with bfg km2.The interior was rough and it ran but it would fall on its face if I gave it any gas at all. It has a rebuilt 4.0 by a tag on the block. The body is fairly straight, with the exception of the front drivers side inner fender. At some point this mj was in a slight wreck and one of the previous owners decided to try and fix it with a hammer, needles to say it is not prity. I'm not to worried about it because the frame is straight and I am justo going to drill all of the spot welds out of both the mj and the sonar 99 xj and graft in the good iner fender. I've done a fair amount of sheet metal work on my comanche and a few other Cherokees so this should turn out almost OEM...

 

Well on to some pictures...

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We started working on this project as soon as it same in to the shop, when unloading it we realized that the cat was clogged so we cut it out with a saw saw and the mj drove off the trailer. It ran way better than before but it still wasn't running right. We weren't to conserened because we would be stripping the truck down to a shell, painting the entire shell and start fresh will the 99 parts from there. It took us roughly 2 days to get the truck striped completely down. The power steering high side line had been leaking for quite some time because every and I do mean every thing had a coating of power steering fluid on it. To date the original mj motor and the engine bay have been scrubbed with multipal degreesers and power sprayed 5 times thoroughly. That leads us to these pictures.

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I just met with Tim on Tuesday, and took a peek at this project, and it's looking good man all I'm saying not to be a spoiler, is that this one will come out pretty clean!  :thumbsup:  oh BTW he had another MJ that he converted to the full 97+ swap, and he is now selling. So as always here are some pics! 

 

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  • 7 months later...
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  • 5 months later...

So the truck sports a 4.0 out of a 95 xj that has 110k miles on it, i have replaced the main and rod and cam bearings, timing chain and a new melling High volume oil pump was installed with a complete reseal of the motor. the head received new valve seals, 3 angle valve job ect. I have yet to start it in the MJ but it was healthy in the XJ so i just freshened it up. The trans is a NV3350 out of a liberty with a AX15 bell housing attached and a brand new shiftier mated to a NP231 Case.

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I'm here in the shop working on the mj this afternoon and I had to move the tank around so I figured I'd show you guys what I do for the fuel tank / sending unit delima on my swapped mjs.... I use a factory mj tank but I utilize a 95/96 xj sending unit /pump. The tank has to be modified but I think it's a better solution than a dakoda tank. The down fall is, just like our mj sending units the 95/96 xj sending units are not in production any more so you can't just buy one at auto zone, they have to come from a junk yard. But the pump is the same from 95 to 01 so pumps are avaliable. I pulled this sending unit out of a clean 96 forest service xj.

Notice that the 96 sending unit has one line out and the same plug as the 97+ harness. The sending unit has a built in, in tank regulator on the top of the sending unit, the float reads the same ohms as a 97+ sending unit and fits the mounting of an mj tank. The slosh pan in the mj tank does not allow the xj sending unit to sit corectly to install the lock ring due to the mj float is the oppisate of the xj float..

I pulled the mj sending unit out of the tank and siphoned all of the old gas out of the tank as best as I could, then I took a clean rag and tried to so up the remaning fuel. Then I let it sit out side in the hot sun for a few days to evaporate any thing that may have been left in the tank. I then fill the tank with water to clean out any thing I've missed and dry it out just to be safe. Once it's dry and I know it's clean I then take a oxy/ace torch and cut out the front portion of the slosh pan as seen in the pictures.. then I let it set a bother day or two to evaporate an't residual moisture and I install the sending unit and wallla fuel issue sorted....

 

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

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