Rebuilding An Old High School Friend!

The family farm is in south central Iowa, near Osceola. We're planning on retiring near Red Oak, which will put us about an hour and a half from the farm so it will be easy to run over and get stuff done for my Mom but still be close to Omaha.

And yep, planning on 11" brakes Already got the backing plates off an old Jeep Cherokee my Uncle had!

 

If the lesabre is front wheel drive the mounting could be an issue.

 

We got started with the tear down this fall. Here are my helpers scraping about 60 years of grease off the chassis





And here is proof that one grown man, a furniture dolly and a small, 8 year old boy can load a jeep tub in the back of a pickup to take it to the sand blaster.



We started stripping it down by hand but when I found out that a local guy would blast the tub for $200 it was kind of a no brainer. So I dropped it off and picked it up a couple of days later. Did I mention that Iowa and a rotting soft top had not been kind to the floorboards???



Pictures really don't do it justice... It's like fine lace in several places. Particularly in the tool box area.

 

You going to cut out the floor boards and buy replacement ones? I don't see repair of them as an option.

 

Awesome project and story! I'm slowly restoring my dad's old hunting Jeep, a '56. I understand your thoughts about replacing the engine and trans, but if the originals are in decent shape I'd have to seriously consider keeping them vs. the hassles of swapping. Does your forseen uses for the Jeep really require the swap? I.e., will it really be worth the hassles?

FWIW, I live in Parker, CO. My Jeep will just be used for fun driving and very mild mountain trails. Old fogey wheeling, so to speak. And I have no plans to replace engine or trans. 11" brakes are already done though! And a '72 D30 front axle.

 

In fact it is (was) a front wheel drive Lesabre but I did quite a bit of research before I committed to this combination. Here is what I found: All the front wheel drive engines utilize the 60 degree GM bell housing (also referred to as the GM Metric pattern). The only kicker is that the starter mounts on the wrong side for most 60 degree bell housings. So you either have to clearance the bell housing or find one with the starter boss on the drivers side. I found that bell housings for 83-92 Camaro's with the 2.8/3.1 V6 have starter bosses on both sides. Luckily I was able to find one on ebay for $80!!

The other big gotcha is that none of the early 3800's came with manual transmissions. So I had to find a flywheel. Luckily alot of guys are using the Buick 3800 to repower their Fiero's and there are several companies out there that supply parts for the swap. I have a flywheel on order from West Coast Fiero which they are balancing to match the flex plate that came off the engine.

Otherwise motor mounts will be easy because the block is already drilled and tapped for standard, rear wheel drive, motor mounts.

Actually, the more I looked into this, I am surprised more XJ guys don't swap them into their Cherokees. Particularly since there is a super charged option they could use.

 

Keep us posted!!!! this sounds awesome

 

You have my attention. This should be pretty cool.

 

i thought the supercharged one was missing the motor mount mounting holes...learn something new every day...

 

Yep! I have a L67 in My 1988 Fiero GT. The Engine is Slightly warmed over. Its Extremely quick and the 3800 was pretty reliable with great internals.
Looks like you are off to a good start!

 

Too cold today to work out on our "retirement homestead" so I cranked up my sunflower heater the in garage and pulled apart the transmission from my Dad's 1970 IH. Looks like it is an early T18 as it has a T98 shift tower on it.



The IH transmission cases are poor candidates for swaps because the bellhousing bolts are internal to the bellhousing which make them difficult to adapt. I also needed a shorter input shaft so I sourced a Ford T18 case and shorter input shaft from R&P 4WD. You can see the difference between the cases.



I swapped the internals all over to the Ford case and threw a rebuild kit at it at the same time. The rebuild kit was largely a waste of money however. I couldn't believe how good the inside of that old transmission looked for having over 300k miles on it. The only parts it honestly needed were new thrust washers as they were more than a little worn and chewed up. But everything else was immaculate, syncros, bearings, gears.... This is even more impressive when you consider all of us kids learned to drive in the old farm truck and one would have thought it would have suffered more through those growing pains.

The shift tower is going to need a little work as the shifter is sloppy to the point you can't get it in reverse. The pin the shifter rides against is worn out so I'll have to repair that tomorrow after work.

Unfortunately I'm largely going to be limited to an hour or two of an evening to work on this. We are building our "retirement" home and that is taking pretty much every free moment I have on the weekends as we are trying to do as much of the work ourselves as possible so we don't have to take out any loans. So we'll see how that goes... Probably not the best time to start a jeep project but I'll need something to take my mind off our construction project!

 

This will be an interesting project, those 3800 motors are a dime a dozen! I had heard that you couldn't use them. Good luck on your project, and congrats on retirement.

 

Got the bellhousing adapted to the T18 this week.



I had to drill and tap four new bolt holes in the bell because the Camaro the transmission sits at a 15 degree angle, for whatever reason, and therefore bolts to the bellhousing canted toward the drivers side. Pretty straight forward however as the bosses for the normal bolt holes were cast into the housing so it was a simple matter of drilling and tapping. Then I had to egg out a couple of the bolt holes on the Ford case to get three of them to align. The fourth bolt hole requires an adapter to support it. Novak and Advance Adapters sell them with their kits but I just grabbed a scrap piece of steel I had laying around and made one... More time than money, remember!





I did pick up an adapter from Advanced Adapters for the transfer case. Disappointingly however, no matter how I twisted it, I could only get three of the six bolt holes to line up with the transmission. A little more time with the die grinder opening up the holes cleared it up but I am still disappointed. They didn't require a lot of work I guess, but still, you'd think for the price it would have fit a little nicer.



At any rate, next step is the transfercase. I'll try to get that rebuilt next week after work

 

Might want to add a spacer between that Bell Housing and that adapter on the 4th bolt

 

That is what I have in mind. I've got some small pieces of 1" .250 wall tubing that I am thinking of cutting a spacer out of. Right now we are just in the mock-up stage. I figure I'll save that for final assembly.

 

Well way too cold Sunday to work on our retirement property. My Dad's framing nailer just does not want to work when it is below 20 degrees... probably has some moisture in it. Or maybe it's just smarter than my brother and I are! Regardless, the high was only supposed to be 15 so I fired up the heater in my garage and did my best to be productive and take my mind off all that I wasn't getting done on our construction project.

Good news is, since I got the transfercase put back together Friday evening I was able to assemble the drive train and see just what this thing is going to look like! Now I have a drive train





Still haven't quite decided what I'm going to do for a clutch. Whether to go to the trouble of a hydraulic clutch or hydraulic throwout bearing... or just go with a simple cable setup? The bellhousing obviously has the mount for the slave cylinder already on there but there is going to be a whole lot going on on the drivers side of this drive train what with the master cylinder and PTO drive shaft. Suggestions? A clutch cable probably is more fitting with my "more time than money" theme.

 

So not a lot of progress only working evenings but progress none the less. Baby steps, right??

Started working on the sheet metal. I priced replacement panels for the front and rear floor and decided that at over $700 it just wasn't in the budget. So I went out and picked up a 4' x 8' sheet of 16ga diamond plate for $68 with the intention of making my own. We'll see how this works.

I decided to start with the bed floor since it is a nice flat, square panel and I figured it would serve as a good one to practice on.



Unfortunately, I did find the rear valance piece thoroughly rusted and did go ahead and just buy a replacement since I didn't think my panel skills were quite up to task of reproducing that one yet.



I also decided to rig up a "poor-man's" rotisserie as well which took some time but I hope will pay some dividends later by easing my access.





At any rate, with the original panel out, I used it as a template to form my replacement. And went to work with some angle iron and hammers since I don't have a sheet metal brake.



All in all I have to say I was pretty pleased with how it fit. I am thinking about chalking this one up as a success!!:stout:

 

Great idea for the rotiserie! fb

 

Thanks. I have a tendency to be impatient and just muscle things around but I'm trying to work smarter, NOT harder as I mature. Overall it works fairly well. It won't spin all the way around and I try to make sure I spend some time with the angle finder making sure each engine stand is square to the other after I move it but it does make it a lot easier to move around and get to the bottom side.