Kitbashing in 1:1
I bought this engine as reference material for one of my Hemi builds... I'm tired of tripping over it, better find a use for it soon!
Tired old V6 comes out. It served me well for over 200,000 miles. I ended up selling it to someone who needed to repower another Jeep... should get another few thousand miles out of it. Hooray for automotive recycling!
The big V8, pulled out of a wreck, will get a second life in my Jeep
To my amazement, everything fits! If it hadn't, it would've been a lot more complicated than shaving some styrene off the wheel wells to make it fit...
And I only broke one bolt putting it back together! 😄
Reassembling the front end
Cleaning and sanding and spraying... I've been prepared for this!
New exhaust hung in place
Tracing out the pins in the wiring harness to connect to the new motor...
...and building up an adapter harness from salvaged connectors
No DTCs, time to fire it up!
A little bit of dress up
And she's moving under her own power again!
Kommentarer
7 21 February 2023, 13:21
Brandon HFor anyone wondering where I get my inspiration for my irresponsible kitbash builds...
21 February 2023, 13:39
Christian WThis conversion looks so easy! I'm astonished, what you are able to do. My totally respect from a car mechanic to another. I thought the plugging of the cables and computers will be a bigger problem. How long have you need to get it run? And also the transmission fitted easily to the driveshaft(s)?
9 March 2023, 05:38
Brandon HThanks Christian! I started pulling the old engine out in April of last year, and started it for the first time again in late July. Took until October to work out some shifting issues and get it roadworthy. It was easy in the sense that all the parts I needed were readily available from other Jeeps, for the most part, but actually making it happen took quite a bit of elbow grease! I did have to buy different driveshafts for the front and rear, but they were off the shelf parts, no custom work needed there. As for the wiring harness, it was just a matter of finding out what wires needed to go where. The new ECU still needed all of the same signals, inputs, and outputs as the old one. I'll have to add a picture of the wiring map I made on my garage wall...
9 March 2023, 12:05
Christian WAwesome! The Jeeps is *your* thing. But the conversion until the first run within close to seven months is pretty good! I won't even know, how much work this project will be in Germany, to get it roadworthy with this setup. To mich paragraphs🙂
9 March 2023, 22:17
Album info
Auto modelers know the drill... create something whacky by taking a big engine from one kit and stuffing into another kit that it has no business being in... This is kinda like that.
