gearheadmb
New member
OK so i started with my 90 YJ, 258 eng, ax15,stock dana 30 front and d35 rear. I bought this thing out of York PA (14 hrs from here) with a burnt piston for $1500, hauled it home and overhauled the engine. While I was at it I got rid of the feedback carb because i hate feedback carbs and replaced it with a rebuilt 78 cj carb. That bolted right up but without the correct carb in there the ECM couldn't control the timing. The first thing I did was go buy a points distributor for a 72 258. That worked ok but I was never very happy with it. After a while I replaced it with a GM style HEI unit from 4wd hardware and i absolutely love that thing It made all the difference in the world over 3000 rpms. So then we were going to start more offroading so I got a lock rite for the rear, some homemade shackle lift, and a new set of 31x10.5x15 Mudkings. At this point it wheeled ok but it wasn't my daily driver anymore and the guys I run with had better setups and i wanted to step up my game a little bit. So my cousin is telling me about this 79 cherokee he found that he wanted to buy so that he could put its 360 engine in his cj5. I did a little research and found out that the cherokee had a dana44hd front and d44 rear and a turbo 400 trans. I told him that if he could get it cheap enough I would split it with him and take the drivetrain. Well we got it for $100, stripped the stuff that we wanted and scrapped the body for $140, so thats cheap enough.:lol: We started out by stripping the perches and shock mounts off the axles. I got new 7" spring perches and shock tabs from a couple fab places and mounted the axles with SOA setup and I also had to do about
1 1/4" blocks on the front prches for the steering to clear the leaf springs. I sandblasted and painted the wheels black (they had a pretty camo thing going on) and mounted a used set of 35x12.5x15 MTRs i found on craigslist. With the tires, SOA, and lift shackles the top of the tub was at 52" high and the top of the rollbar was at 6'7".The turbo 400 went in pretty straightforward. I had to get a flexplate from napa and use the starter from the cherokee. Luckily the radiator in my jeep was not original and it had a transmission cooler circuit in it and all i had to do was run new lines to it. I topped it off with a Hurst Promatic 2 ratchet shifter. The quadratrac tcase was afunny thing. Low range was an option on those and my case didnt have it.The low range unit actually bolts onto the back of the tcase. I found a tcase with a low range on ebay for $250 and bought it thinking I got a good deal. Then, naturally, 2 weeks later I found one on craigslist for $50 and bought that one too. I have 3 tcases now and the chains are shot in all 3. The rear output is offset to the right which means all the torque is running through the chain all the time. The up side to this is that the rear output is also about 4" lower than it would be with a normal tcase which helps pinion angle alot. The down side is that if the chain gets to sloppy it jumps a tooth and the case literally explodes.:shock:
Also the rear diff is offset so that should make it a little easier to dodge rocks and stumps with both diffs on the rh side. So with all that done it made its first trip out of the garage in 2 months last night. There is no drag link on it so my cousin guided the front wheels. I know this sounds stupid but the thoughts of it moving under its own power were just to overwhelming to resist. Plus if that sounds stupid we also drove it up a mini rti ramp(just some blocks of wood) with no steering. My DOM tubing showed up so tomorrow I plan on making my z-link and doing the real maiden voyage, then it will probably just get parked until spring since i don't have a heated building to work in for the finishing touches. My future plans for this thing are gears and lockers, and reverse pattern manual valve body. After thats all done I think i'm gonna go propane.
1 1/4" blocks on the front prches for the steering to clear the leaf springs. I sandblasted and painted the wheels black (they had a pretty camo thing going on) and mounted a used set of 35x12.5x15 MTRs i found on craigslist. With the tires, SOA, and lift shackles the top of the tub was at 52" high and the top of the rollbar was at 6'7".The turbo 400 went in pretty straightforward. I had to get a flexplate from napa and use the starter from the cherokee. Luckily the radiator in my jeep was not original and it had a transmission cooler circuit in it and all i had to do was run new lines to it. I topped it off with a Hurst Promatic 2 ratchet shifter. The quadratrac tcase was afunny thing. Low range was an option on those and my case didnt have it.The low range unit actually bolts onto the back of the tcase. I found a tcase with a low range on ebay for $250 and bought it thinking I got a good deal. Then, naturally, 2 weeks later I found one on craigslist for $50 and bought that one too. I have 3 tcases now and the chains are shot in all 3. The rear output is offset to the right which means all the torque is running through the chain all the time. The up side to this is that the rear output is also about 4" lower than it would be with a normal tcase which helps pinion angle alot. The down side is that if the chain gets to sloppy it jumps a tooth and the case literally explodes.:shock:
Also the rear diff is offset so that should make it a little easier to dodge rocks and stumps with both diffs on the rh side. So with all that done it made its first trip out of the garage in 2 months last night. There is no drag link on it so my cousin guided the front wheels. I know this sounds stupid but the thoughts of it moving under its own power were just to overwhelming to resist. Plus if that sounds stupid we also drove it up a mini rti ramp(just some blocks of wood) with no steering. My DOM tubing showed up so tomorrow I plan on making my z-link and doing the real maiden voyage, then it will probably just get parked until spring since i don't have a heated building to work in for the finishing touches. My future plans for this thing are gears and lockers, and reverse pattern manual valve body. After thats all done I think i'm gonna go propane.
