258 head on a 232?

I'm trying to put power steering on my wife's 5 for her and I have a 4.2 laying around so my plans was to just pull the head and intake and swap on to her 232 that runs great but smokes a little, I'm guessing from the valve seals because it day for a long time before we picked it up. Are they interchangeable? TIA!

 

Identical in the same year AFAIK.

Different years will have different head bolt diameters (7/16" vs 1/2") and later heads will have more tapped holes for the PS on the left. You can accommodate the bolts by drilling the head or adding spacers (available from HESCO IIRC).

A Renix 4.0L head will give you higher compression. Bolt-in AFAIK.

 

JMO - it seems like a lot of work swapping heads to get new valve seals. The seals are cheap and you can replace them with the head in place.

Have you tested the compression? Rings are the other usual suspect.

 

Well it was more for the ease of putting power steering on it for her, the possible loss of smoking was just an added bonus IF valve seals were the issue..... On the other hand would I be able to swap the intakes to gain the bolt locations for the power steering lol. it's mainly an off road rig, that may see occasional weekend cruising, so I was trying to get ps on it for her for little to no cost.....

 

That makes sense ... if the new head has the tapped holes that you need.

A 232 is just a 258 with a shorter stroke. They are the same engine otherwise. I think that the last 232s were put in Jeeps in 1978 (1979?). There was a major revision of the engine for 1981, that lightens the engine considerably. But the measurements and bolt patterns don't change.

Why not drop in the 258 complete?

 

Because the 258 is an unknown, which probably sounds silly since I want to take the head off and use it lol, I may still swap the whole thing, haven't totally decided yet, I had a 258 in a yj and it was a great engine after I put an HEI and MC2100 on it

 

You can do a compression test on it . and if the compression is the engine should be good too.