My Reunited Jeep Build

Waiting for my welder co-worker to get out to my place to weld the mounts in I did some more positioning and made sure I liked where everything was going. So to start off I moved it up one notch and I am happy with clearence now.


With it now clearing better I worked on the transmission mount. I got the Novak universal mount and it addmittedly confused me with a few things. One being when the bushings are installed in the plate, there is a gap between the shoulder and plate. I am not sure if I was looking at it right but I just got some washers for 1” bolts from the hardware store to fill the gap as well as longer bolts. One thing I noticed is center of frame channels is different from center of original trans mounting holes. I went off center of the mounting holes.


With that said, with a cam sticking out to the grill it looks like either the engine is offset or not parallel to vehicle but I think that will not be an issue. I called Novak and they agreed.

The engine is now completely in place, minus the fully welded mounts. I can only do so much until the horns are welded on, so I did what I could. This week I worked on prepping and powdercoated a bunch of parts, and painted what would not handle the oven. The various brackets and hardware were gloss black, LS covers and accessory bracket were platinum silver and the valve covers satin textured black. I do enjoy powdercoating as a hobby, I just need to get an area better to do powdercoating for easier setup

Now that thoes parts are ready I put togather more of the engine and like where everything sat.

After I got all that done, I worked on cooling hoses. Took some trial and error but through research of what others have posted and other reccomendations I found the winning combo.

For the upper hose I used Gates 22345 which is the lower hose from a Pontiac Sunfire and other models. Only needed to be trimmed one side of it. Looking at it you could probably trim the other side instead at the same spot before the outer bend and it would fit the same.


For the lower hose it took a lot more trimming on both ends. This is a Gates 21615 and is the lower hose for XJs and MJs. Wish I had better pictures where I trimmed but only the middle section wad really used.

Heater core hoses were simple, one is from an 80s Toyota pickup, Gates 28471. The other is a universal hose, 28480 but is the same thing, just bigger ID. Dont have the 28480 yet but is essentially the same process. I cut about 1” from the short leg and routed it to the heater core and trimmed where needed on the long leg. I found a bracket with a clip meant for 2 hoses and I homestly have no idea where it came from. It might have been part of this motor but I bolted it to the valve cover and used that to get the hoses away from the fenders and headers. I will of course be sandblasting and powdercoating the bracket.

Had the mounts welded in last weekend. Im glad I waited because my welding skills are not great at the moment and I need to practice more. Just dont have enough power in the garage to really weld long enough. But oh well.




So now that that was done I started working on rebuilding the motor. This being my first rebuild I am taking it real slow. Started cleaning out the block, brushing all the galleys and bearing surfaces. When that was done I got the new cam which is a Summit drop in “Tow/Torque Effecincy” cam. Mostly got that for the possible extra MPGs since already the stock 5.3 will already have enough power to make it fun. Got nee LS7 lifters and trays and installed those. That was one evening.







Next step was getting the crank in. It really was a huge help to borrow my buddies shop fancy electric torque wrench with angle finder as well. Went through a whole can of brake clean constantly cleaning things. Checked wtih a plastigauge and all the mains came in within spec using standard bearings. After that started installing for good. This took a whole evening as well.






After that was rods and pistons. Could only check the clearence on one rod journal but was right in the middle of specs. Rings were also within spec. This tool a whole evening as well.






But that is where I am at. Plan on finiahing the whole motor this weekend and maybe pull the tub, but need to clean garage again.

Did some things this weekend. First off, pretty much completed the motor. Just some small odds and ends, like hardware is needed. Been buying a lot of ICT Billet hardware since most of the bolts were either missing or just rusty. But cleaned up like a good polished turd!






And tub is off with the help of an engine hoist and a buddy who was dumb enough to believe this would be easy. Was too late to realize I did not have it well balanced so I had to make do until the end with it wanting to tolt bad,but came off with no body damage luckily.





I really want to get the body back on ASAP to keep it from taking so much space. For that to happen I need to get to work on the axle rebuilds since they will be so much easier to pull now than when the body is back on. In addition to that, I need to figure out what I am going to do with the transmission. Sounds like a lot of people go AX15 but also sounds like if I rebuild my NV3550 it will be able to handle this mild 5.3 with cam and headers only. Really not sure what to go with. There is a significant price difference between the 2 so cost is a variable.

All I did on this long weekend is finish cleaning and painting the frame minus where the lower control arms were and collect a bunch of new harware for the suspension when its time to start re-assembly.






I did not put much time this 4 day weekend like I was hoping to because I had to take some time for the shitbox dailys. My $1000 shitbox daily and other $500 shitbox both decided to not work before I had to go to work. So had to deal with that and decided to finance something again and ended up with a 2017 Civic LX base model 22k miles with a factory warranty to 100k miles. Not the same exciting car the 16 Mustang was, but atleast I am not paying anywhere near as much on it and I am fine with this being all season and going through the salty roads of winter. I was also cross shopping with 4 door JKs and I just did not like driving them so went with the Civic. Atleast all my attention can got to the thing that matter instead, like the shitbox hotrod projects!

I have been on vacation since 12/18 and unfortunatly comes to an end tomorrow. But with all that time I was able to get quite a bit done. I was hoping to get more but it was a matter of constantly waiting for small parts that stopped progress and with all the shippers being slammed took some extra time.

I pretty much just worked prinarily on front end suspension and axle rebuild, which was mostly painting and powdercoating. I have decided to regear the front to 3.73 so I got the parts to do it but I am not finished. This is my first time messing with gears so I an taking my time.








I also messed around with the fuel system. I think I have it routed the way I want it. I want to get the EVAP system functional, so still researching how to do it with the GM PCM. I seen one build on youtube where a GM tank pressure sensor was added to the tank, but beypnd that I am not sure how to hook up everything else on the front end after the EVAP hard line.




Did some other small things like clean out the inside of the frame and little details on the engine. But this is where I am with it.

Axle is done, front wheels are on the ground, and engine is in for good until I blow it up! This was my first time setting up an axle. I never want to do it again in the cold on the floor like I had to. If it were warm out and on the floor or cold and on a bench, ill tolerate thoes scenarios. I do not regret installing the front axle before regearing it since I got a lot done before new pinion bearings for setup showed up, but it still sucked. I got a polished aluminum cover for it. Not a fan of the polished for this so I am going to glass bead blast it to dull it and make it look like a cast finish and powdercoat matte clear over top.




Now that the wheels were on the ground I was able to install the motor. All the LS swap videos I watch, they just go from the front with all the body on and drop it so easily. Even with no body at all and only doing the engine I still had to go at it at wierd angles and had to remove the wheel simillar to how I did it for mockup with the body on. I just need a longer hoist.





I also ran some of the new brake lines and was going to work on setting up the adjustable pilot bearing but I just realized the GM clutch kit came with the wrong alignment tool (at least wrong for putting a Jeep trans on to an LS using a SBC clutch) and I did not have the bellhousing dowel pins either. I think I could get away with eyballing center without the tool or dowel pins for mockup purposes to do the throwout bearing but it was getting cold and so I just called it a night with the flywheel installed.



I am going to order the tool and dowel pins, as well as looking into the LS6 PCV system that allegedly consumes a lot less oil which is due to it being on the valley cover where little oil get splashed into it vs the valve cover.

Been a moment. Got some stuff done shortly after the last update, but it got too cold to work in the garage so the project was paused for a bit. This week it finally got warm and I was able to accomplish a lot.

I was able to get the trans and transfercase put on for good before it got too cold but that was where progress stopped. Had a hell of a time with the Novak adjustable throwout bearing, but enventually got it set I hope. After that I could not find any clutch alignment tool that would work. So I improvised one. On top of that I did not have bolts to mount the clutch, but was able to source some locally.

But finally got that all done, then it got cold and I did not do too much. Went with aftermarket valve covers that use LS3 coils. The ICT brackets made the spark plug wires interfere with a few things like the dipstick tube and the coolant temp sensor.



Now that it got warm this week I was able to finish up all the cleaning and painting and almost finish the rear suspension. I did a real half-assed job on the Dana 35 since a 8.8 will be in its place in a few months so I was not too worried about prep.

During re-assembly I did notice a few things, first I lost the bump stop cups so I need to wait for new cups to come in to finish this, and second was the track bar would collide with the fuel pressure regulator where I put it so I need to re-do my fuel system to figure out where it will go. But that wont hold me up going further completing other steps in the project.

I was really hoping to have the body back on this weekend, but couple of little things to finish first.

Figured I should update since I have done a lot over the last few weeks, especially now that its warmer. Body is run and engine is running!



When the body was back on, I have been focusing a lot on the wiring, mostly chassis since I decided to go with the Holley Terminator X system which handles most of the engine wiring. I bought a Weather-Pack connecter and crimper set, and that really opened up a lot of possibilities for macking this an extreamely clean and easy install. I have even found the terminals for plugs that Jeep used factory that the crimping tool I have works on. Instead of having to splice onto existing wires and hoping it hold, I can just make a new circuit. And I have been trying to get the same colored wires with stripes when making the new run.

With that said, I seperated the fuel pump modual circuits from the old engine harness and made it a sub harness that connects to the main firewall harness. It connects to a 4 port connector below the brake booster. I am doing something similar with the AC so I can add that easily by just plugging in a sub harness when ever I am ready to do that.

I ran the electric fan circuit from the stock PDC where I was able to find the factory terminals for the fuses so I have 12v hot but I have yet to find the relay terminals so I am just going to glue in a relay circuit in the open section of the PDC for now. From there it goes to the 14 pin connector on then fender and I added the 2 pins for 12v and ground that goes to the fan plug that is now part of the OE fender harness.

The project I am currently working on is I am wanting to retain OE gauges so I have to have the Jeep PCM take readings from duplicate gauges on the motor. I am making a sub harness that connects the engine gauges to the chassis harness where I am wanting to tie in the black and white PCM plug to the main harness instead of seperate like it was before. I found out that the pins in the Jeep PCM connectors are the same pins as a gen 3 LS PCM connectors so I was able to order some crimp connectors to make a whole new gauge cluster sensor sub harness from scratch. I will probably connect the sensor harness to the C103/104 connectors since most of the circuits in there will no longer be used.

Its a lot of extra work and some expense but makes it a lot cleaner.

And oh yeah engine started too! Has good oil pressure (50ish PSI cold at around 950rpm) and idles nicely. The Holley system was real simple to hook up. I just had to source a coil pack harness which I got a new ACDelco set off my buddy for $50. I just re-loomed it with the braided mesh to match the engine harness. I had to de-pin it to add heat shrink at the ends, but at this point I have gotten good with assembling and dis-assembling various automotive connectors.

So lots got done. Only reason I have not really updated this since for the longest time every time I tried to get on this page, my phone would freeze. I think it was all the attatched photos in the posts so I took a few out.

But its running and driving and been driving all summer. I basiclly re-did all of the harness and ran most of it along the firewall harness. Stock gauges work, though I question the accuracy of the oil pressure and coolant temp gauges. Been running into a few small issues like any major project.

Had some major initial tune issues on the first drive that was done in May. Twice there was a loud pop and smoke just pouring from the engine bay. After the smoke cleared I saw the vave cover gasket were dislocated. I have no way to prove this, but the only thing that I can think of is it ran so rich, fuel vapors made its way into the crank case and detonated in the motor. But I found a stock LS1 tune in the Holley program and loaded that up and it was no longer blowing the valave cover gasket. The LS1 tune was not perfect since I was getting like 6mpg just driving around country roads. Ended up getting a professional tuner involved and now get closer to 15 and I think could be better.

Had some problems with in the middle of driving where the Holley ECU would just ramdomly reset it self and lose its tune and stall. I was able to load up the tune everytime from the SD card but it did it like every mile. The tuner told me to attatch the ECU main power cables directly to the battery so I rigged something up and it worked. Its not pretty and I have not made a permanant fix yet.

Went through like 3 different power steerimg setups since there was always something interfering. I think the mounts were welded to far towards the driver side. Ended up with a Trailblazer SS setup and still had to space the steering shaft far over.

Had a problem with some of the brand new lifters already failed, so had to tale the head off to replace thoes and buy new head gaskets and bolts too.

More recently this past fall I started stripping the whole Jeep down to get it painted. Took a bit longer than I thought, but I was expecting it to be the end of the season so I was not too worried about it, though we got quite a few unexpected warm days in Fall and Winter like almost 70 a few days after Christmas. I put a lot of effort into restoring the exterior and interior. I went as far as disassembling the soft top frame into its individual pieces and had it powdercoated with some other parts like the rear seat frame. I also reupholsterd the seats with new covers from Seatzmfg and had them do a custom set using a Porche material with perforated inner section.

There was A LOT that I did from last update to now, but thats the jist of it. I still have a lot more I am working on as far as the restore is concerned. The painter still needs to do a final polish, but that might be closer to Spring. Since I have not touched the Dana 35 at all beyond the disc swap I did early on and slapped a quick coat of paint, I am rebuilding a Dana 44 that I feel like I got a good deal on and going to convert it to Trak-Lok and disc brakes. And I bought an LJ to fix and flip. I really want to use the proceeds to source a LSA supercharger as well as a better trans to handle the extra power.

And a couple more pictures.

Not much got done with this other than I found my next improvement over what I did. I bought this Escalade for $1500 and still has some good parts to sell. But the important parts is whats under the hood thats not there. A 6.2 L92 with a 6L80E. I am still debating on going to auto because stick is just so much fun for me, but there are so many benefits to running the 6L80. This will probably end up being a next winter project but ill rebuild it over summer. But I will also conider going DBW too since the gen 4 just seems easier to wire that in vs a gen 3.

Well the cheap 6.2 dream was short lived. All I got out if this deal is a 6l80 in unknown condition. So who wants to buy an 07 Escalade for $1250 som assembly required?

Bought a 6.2 L92, 6L80, tranfercase, wire harness and PCM for $1800 with no extra holes in the block last night. I have made back most of my money on the Escalade and can sell the remaining Escalade parts and 6L80 with transfercase to pay for most if not all of this. So the cheap
6.2 6L80 build back on!

kiwi said:

Holy. Shit.
Just read through your entire thread, is there anything that doesn’t look brand new on this jeep?! Amazing job. What’s the plan with the other engine that’s currently in the jeep?

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Thanks! At the moment trans and rear Dana 35 are the only used pieces that have not been touched other than a coat of paint. I have a Dana44 I am rebuilding off to the side right now, and still deciding trans but will probably be the 6L80 that will be rebuilt.

I have thought of a few options. First option was to sell the engine, trans, transfercase, Terminator X, and the chassis wire harnesses I modified to make everything work as a mostly complete TJ swap package. And would install and complete for more as well.

Another option is to buy another Jeep, more of a offroad build and put everything in that.

Or swap it into my 4 banger Ranger sitting in my back yard.

So been busy now that its getting warmer. I focused on getting the interior finished. I bassiccly stripped the inside bare and put a coat of chassis saver and bedliner in. I am pleased with how it came out. Even though I still will use carpet, the areas the carpet does not cover wont look like crap.

While I had all the interior out, I took this oppurtunity to install a factory sub console I got complete for $70, and conveniently sold my old console for $70. I ran the power wire to the underhood fuse box and found my fan relay socket was getting hot so I had to run new thicker wire to that as well with a new and better socket. I still need to work more on the sound since the music is not as clear as I want, but I think the new Quadratec replacement sub is putting out enough bass.

Beyond that I have done nothing with the 6.2 yet, but I am planning the build around a goal I want to do in the next 2-3 years. I want to make a trip to a small village in Canada on the Artic Ocean that is the furthest North you can drive on public roads. It is roughly 4000 mile drive one way with the last 500 miles being gravel/dirt and only gas is at either ends and one station in the middle. So I need to build something with that is better on gas than 13.5mpg. If the luxory 6000lb brick known as an Escalade can get 20mpg, why cant my 3200lb brick with the same motor and trans get that?