Now it was time to weld them to the motor mounts. Actually turned out better than I had thought they would. Now I just need to test fit the skid and see how it all lines up & looks.

Drivers Side.




Passenger Side




Passenger Side




Drivers Side

 

Your welds are lookin' nice at least.

 

Thanks I think???? I'm getting better but still have issues some of the time.

 

Looks better than my welds. And I used to weld exhaust for a livin'.

 

I've been working at trying to get my welds to look better. I didn't take any pictures of the welds on the underside. My upside down welds leave something to not be proud of. One side was better than the other I will say.

 

Howdy everyone,
Yep I'm still alive and kickin. I took a few months off from working on the Jeep so didn't get anything done this summer on it. I just needed a break from it and while I really didn't do much of anything this summer I finally started working on it again about a month ago.

The biggest thing I've really done to it was to get the wiring done for the main harness. I had to blend a Dodge Ram harness and a Jeep TJ harness together to make one that would work in the Jeep but also control the 5.9 (stroked 6.7) engine. That took me a few weeks of pouring threw wiring diagrams at night as I watched TV and then 4-5 days laying things out in the Jeep.



Yes my brain hurts after looking at this stuff for a few days.





I started with a 1998 Dodge harness and a 1997 early TJ harness. This is an important part since the 01-01/96 TJ has different wiring than later models.





First thing was to remove all the old NASTY greasy plastic loom off both harnesses.




Had to empty this twice as I was removing all the old loom.



I'm using Painless Wiring loom to cover the blended harnesses with.




And I'm old school so I use shoe tags to label all the connectors. With this F&B intake a lot of the sensors aren't in the stock location so I wanted to lay the harness on the engine and set the wires where they needed to be.




Then it was just a matter of putting both harnesses onto the Jeep and start tracing wires.



To blend the two together you lose the gray Dodge PCM plug from the harness and replace it with the Jeep gray PCM plug. One of the KEWL parts about swapping a Dodge magnum V-8 into a 1997-2002 TJ is that the PCM mounts in the stock location and uses the same connectors for 98% of the engines.




After tracing wires and making sure I had a firm idea what I needed to do and where each wire was going I FINALLY cut wires. The first cut was a little never racking but I did it.




The second cut was a lot easier to do.



And from that I lost all this wire from the Dodge harness.




This is the OLD harness from Backwoods Off-Road that I was having a lot of issues with and was the reason why I had decided to make a new harness for my V-8.




The two harnesses blended together. The wires are just taped to each other for right now. I'll lay it out on the floor and try to route wires in a more neat and organized manner. Then I'll splice all the wires together and then test start the engine before I put the loom over everything.

 

One of the other things I wanted to try out was to see if I could use some shorty headers instead of the block hugger headers. A lot of the people who do this swap use the stock Dodge exhaust manifolds instead of headers so I thought why wouldn't shorty headers fit.

I knew going into this that I might have issues because of the custom 3 link front suspension I was using. And YEP the header dumps out almost right on top of the drivers side upper link. But I'm going to see if I can snake the Y-pipe around it. I think I can notch the lip of the tub and fit the exhaust down through there.



There isn't a lot of room on the drivers side with everything that is going on.




But I haven't given up hope yet. I'll see if I can make it all fit.




Of course the passenger side is no problem at all.




This side should be a piece of cake.




Just had to throw the intake on for a SEXY shot.

 

The other thing I've been dealing with was trying to make enough clearance for the York compressor that I need for my onboard air system. With all the custom things I have going on room is at a premium so I've had to make some modifications to things. I keep wondering how many more times I'll have to install and pull the engine before it's back in the frame for the final time. I know I'll have to pull it at least one more time to do some final welding and then painting.




Set back in the frame.




I need to clearance this shock tower some more as I'm worried that when the engine rocks it'll hit it.




Drivers side PS pump is close but there is enough room there.




Of course all the Jeep folks tell me how I'm crazy for doing all this.




Got out the plasma cutter and trimmed off a little more of the shock tower. And yes I ended up pulling the engine twice while I did this.

 

This pretty much catches you all up to where I am at now. I've got some other wiring things I need to take care of before I'm all done with it. I have some things I'd like to add to my PDC like a relay for my electric fan & a relay for the O/D since my TJ didn't come with a O/D transmission until 2003. And I have a dual battery setup that has a relay I could put a relay into the PDC also. And I need to figure out how to make my O/D switch I've bought to light up when I've disabled the O/D. And the ORO AiRock uses a generic wiring harness that I am going to try to shorten to fit my TJ. I happen to have a spare if I screw it up. I'm still a few months out from being close to done with this project and of course with COVID making things harder to obtain it just adds to all the challenges.

I've ordered my tires and they should be here sometime between the end of Oct to the end of Nov. I decided to go with the Mickey Thompson Baja Pro XS tires in a 38x13.5x17. Mickey Thompson | Baja Pro XS (mickeythompsontires.com)

 

A little tip when doing wiring, stagger the joints so it isn't as thick in that one spot, and use a bare open barrel crimp. It will last the longest. How did you write up your dual battery setup?