*Day 10 and 11 Saturday and Sunday  7-10-10 and 7-11-10   These two days were a blur of doing things and redoing things and finishing what we started the previous day and such, so I thought I would just lump them together, but for truth in blogging regulations, I thought I would mention that it was two days

I had hoped we would get it all finished and ready for Aaron to wire on Saturday, but with a late 5:00 start and lots of nit picky cutting and repositioning for the shifters to fit, it wasn't to be. I was disheartened to notice that since the tranny pan was an inch lower than the other, and the smallest tranny mount that would fit is another inch lower, I thought I would be loosing 2" of clearance under there... that was unacceptable! So more thinking, more re-doing, and more cutting. I re clocked the Transfer case (again) to lower it. yes lower it. Since the transmission mount was an inch lower than the pan anyway, I could clock the TC down and that would create more space up top where it was hitting the body. This gave me almost an inch. That and pounding on the tub metal and cutting a hole for the shifter linkage to go up more.

 The transmission mount came with 4 bolts that were supposed to drop down through the skid plate leaving both nut and bolt hanging down. Bob had the idea (wow, Bob with an idea!) to just cut the bolts off and drill holes in the mounting plate and push bolts up. With the skid plate lined up, and some careful measuring, we drilled up through the skid plate into the Tranny mount. Easy alignment of bolts and holes when you can do it this way. The first "careful measuring" was about a 1/4 inch off (including some drill wandering and angle) and a nut wouldn't fit. No worries, just tap in some threads and no nuts needed. The original thought was to counter sink some flat head bolts in there, but we thought that might take too much strength out of the skid plate, so I went to the hardware store for some round headed bolts. That should make it easier to slide over a rock than with regular bolt heads.

Now back to the shifters..... again. Lots of head scratching and soul searching and chips ahoy cookies later, we got it all to fit in there with minimal cutting and maximum use of the two previous floor plates. It's not too pretty now, but it will be covered with carpet in the final version. The cable for the auto trans was slipped into a notch cut in the floor plate, and the original rubber grommet was used for protection. (make your own protection and rubber joke here......) You can't see it from this angle, but there is a big hole on the passenger side for the 4x shifter arm to travel along, but it will be easily covered with a little sheet metal, and no one will be the wiser. I was able to incorporate the original AT shifter bracket by cutting off the edge as mentioned before, and cutting some off the end, and cutting off a corner, and cutting off some edge for the other shifter, and cutting off a bit more, and cutting some more of the opening in the floor, and cutting the notch for the cables.... Thank God and Black and Decker for power tools!

Bob is happy....   he can see that we are almost there! This shows that we got the belly up and everything is actually happy where it sits. The transmission mount is drilled and tapped and the skid plate is in and tightened down. Hopefully the wiring and exhaust work to come won't need to remove it again.

 Here you can see the actual spacing that was required for the belly up skid plate. in the end, after much work, we got it up enough so that we only needed a 3/16 inch washer as a spacer! Not bad considering it was going to be 2" as one point!

I was all ready to close it up and get it going, but we really should take care of some of the little stuff before handing it over to Aaron. So we plugged in various transmission wires and lighting and the winch controls. Put the battery back in (not hooked up yet!) put on the K&N air filter (with some major hose and fitting reworking),  and hooking up the Power steering and Hydro boost break system. (stealing adapters and such from the old PS box) These little things all had some other little thing that had to be done first, so it was about 1.5 hours of tweaking at the end. We loaded everything needed for the wiring harness and EFI in the CJ and loaded it all on the trailer. With the height of the CJ, there was no trouble at all lowering it from the lift onto the trailer.

 WAHOOOOOO!!!!!!

It's official! the Motor and tranny swap is out of Bob's shop and on to Aaron for the final touches of installing the wiring harness and the fuel injection system.

Items still needing to be done: Wiring, All Fluids poured in (trans fluid, oil, coolant) Trans Cooler hoses attached (with tranny temp sensor), and Drive Shafts sized and installed, Exhaust bent and installed. Anything else? of course. I need to get the shifter holes covered with some sheet metal, and get the carpet back in there, and make some sort of boot for the Auto Trans shifter, and I'm sure there will be more to come, but for now... it's out of Bob's hair!

8.5 hours  This weekend,  46 hours for this stage! (39 billable) And almost as much time writing this blog and fighting with the site to get it up.

Look for the adventures of Aaron, coming soon to a computer near you!