I bought a TJ because why????

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

I'm debating adding doing a 1" body lift and 1" motor mount lift so I can rain the trans/tcase up and have a flattish belly. The other reason would be to add in a separate crossmember for the tranny mount, so you can pull the belly pan off without dropping everything. I don't know how worthwhile this is given what I plan to do with this as far as wheeling goes.

[Scoobienorth]

When you look at a tj long enough it does make sense though.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

It is pretty absurd how far down the belly pan hangs.

[pointsnorth]

I’ve had mine off twice and I will be doing something similar when I start the rebuild


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[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Doing some reading on the tcase situation it *looks* like 97-03ish used a long input gear with the 4.0L applications, at least with the manual trans. Mine is a 99 built 00, and it has the NV3550, which supposedly is supposed to use this long input. I'm guessing it doesn't really matter, but all of the other NP231s I have laying around are early XJ stuff and they used a short input. I have what looks like a Dodge 23 spline medium input, I believe I took it out of a case I destroyed to make the Ecobox in my XJ (I needed a 21 spline input for that since it's going to a Renix AW4, but wanted to use the 6 pinion planetaries).

I think I'd rather not use one of the XJ tcases based on that, which means I need to find a TJ or XJ one that is late enough to have the long input. Or just use the one that's in it.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Things are getting pretty hardcore here. I painted the Moog ZJ steering parts.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

I decided I'd buy Rough Country front and rear adjustable track bars for this "build" because they were actually in stock from somewhere that would sell them to me, and the front one doesn't use a single sheer heim that requires you to drill out the bracket on the frame. I did decide to oversize the holes in the bushing sleeves all to 1/2", as the M12 ones on the rear one are stupid, and the front one is a M10 from the factory and notorious for wearing out and oblonging the hole in the (sheetmetal) bracket on the front axle. Originally I was going to just go to 7/16" on the front, but the bushing sleeve is the same OD as the rear ones, so I didn't see any harm in going to 1/2".

Are these a good product? Mmm, not great. They are definitely better than the stock stuff. The tie rod end in the front one is probably the weak link, and the adjusting collar/sleeve on the rear. I suspect they will be completely adequate for what I'm doing.

[Scoobienorth]

If I’m not mistaken the tie rod rough country uses is the same as what’s already in your Jeep, so it’s a cheap in stock part, which I prefer over expensive or hard to find stuff.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

So I figured I'd take a crack at using the input gear I had to make an older tcase work. TLDR; it did not work.

Novak has some (bad) info on this, as is typical of them, but the main takeaway is that the "long" TJ input is about 2.1" long from the mounting face of the tcase. You have to do some math and measuring to figure this out, but this Dodge medium length (maybe, it's shorter than a GM one) is the same length at the long TJ one. The Dodge one is from a NP241DLD.

The gear cut is the same, since it's an early cut gear (94, Novak says that is a late cut but they're wrong, late is 95+), so it's the same as the short one out of the 90 tcase I was hoping to use. Bearing size is the same.

What is difference is the pocket and bearing that supports the mainshaft. The 241 uses a much larger bearing and pocket. So you would have to use a 241 mainshaft for it to work. Which isn't going to happen because I already bought a 231 SYE.

Yeah, so nope. The other option perhaps is a Dodge 231 tcase for an automatic would have the same length and spline input, but a smaller bearing.

[pointsnorth]

What about a Chevy 231


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[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

What about a Chevy 231


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I think they're all 27 spline input?

Doesn't really matter now, I found a whole tcase on eBay and bought it. I have no idea how you can ship a tcase from the US to Canada for $25, but it's through their "global ship center" and I've had good luck with that before. Watch me get a box full of pictures of a tcase.

[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Minor/pathetic update, I cut the brackets off the 8.8 and got the tubes mostly prepped for welding the brackets on. As it turns out, the Sport-Trac this came out of must have served double duty as a submarine.

You can actually see significant material loss from under the spring perch from rust, I didn't quite smooth the high sides where the welds are so it's note quite as bad, but yeah, it's missing a lot of metal:

Caliper brackets have big divots in them from the pads:

I'm assuming I can just weld up and smooth out the brackets. Debating putting a patch/partial sleeve over the axle tubes, but at the same time they're supposedly 1/4" thick so I *should* still have a decent amount of material left.

[arse_sidewards]

20240405_131009.jpg

General Motors would be proud.

[pointsnorth]

Yeah I just welded up a sterling that a customer supplied for a build that after the perches where cut off i welded up the divots where the rust was bad under the perches


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[Scott Cee AKA 2drx4]

Any signs of it warping after you did that? Certainly would be easier than a patch of any sort.