I have a few miscellaneous loose ends to tie up, like a distributor clamp that doesn’t want to tighten down and a temp gauge that’s suddenly reading 220 when the engine hasn’t been started in days. But the swap is more or less done and I’ve even taken it for a drive.
Category: V8 Motor Swap
A project journal for swapping a V8 in place of an inline-6 in a CJ-7.
Motor installed
The motor is now bolted in place and connected to the transmission. Now there’s just a million little things to do, and I got a pretty good start on the list this past weekend. No photos in this post… I’ll save them for next time. Plus, Carrie has my camera in Florida.
I’ve been wrestling with a number of issues since I last wrote.
Engine Built
Got quite a bit done this weekend… I stripped down the front of the motor to check the timing chain, and replaced the water pump and thermostat when I built it back up. I borrowed pretty heavily from the 360 sitting in the J-truck project vehicle but Fraser also provided some key parts (thanks Fraser). After inspecting what looked like a new timing chain as well as the condition of a lot of the other parts on this motor, it’s pretty clear to me that this engine was built but never fired up. Could be the deal of the century or a colossal waste of time.
Out with the old…
I got a deal on a V8-304 awhile back and although the 258’s performance improved quite a bit after finding and fixing a problem in the carburetor, you can’t beat the power or sound of a V8. The motor I got came with headers, an optical-pickup distributor, and a 4-barrel aluminum intake.