Jeep Strokers

Here we go!

This is my son's build. With only $2,000. He bought a 1991 YJ Wrangler with a blown 2.5L engine. The PO owner said he could not start it and didn't know what was wrong. We drug it home found a dead fuel pump and had it running within hours but with a really bad rod knock. The crank was unsalvagable so we rebuilt her, painted her in the garage, herculined the tub and off he went.

After saving up for a few years he wanted to swap in a 4.0. I advised he just sell and buy a new Jeep. He protested that he didn't want to for sentimental reasons. So he bought a running '96 4.0 out of an XJ $200 and a complete wiring harness with computer out of a '95 YJ $250. After much research we decided why not go all the way and STROKE it! This is a daily driver so we decided on something that would be somewat practical. We did a lot of research on this site and others and ended up buying a custom kit from Russ Potenger

Recipe:

4.2 crank (the old heavy one) $260
Russ's custom forged .030 piston and rod set $325 compression height 1.385, dish volume 26cc. (The combustion chambers were a smidge over 58cc)
CompCams 68-232-4 206/212 (new SLP VS 1456 springs)
DIY ported ported HO 0630 1.91/1.50 58.2 cc (surfaced only) head
.051 felpro composite head gasket
.043 quench
0280155715 Bosch EV6CL 24.7 lb @43 psi injectors
Whole bunch of stock replacement parts from Russ (his prices are as good or better than amazon and eBay apples to apples).

Waiting on block machining.

Any advice or observations are more than welcome.

Are YJ frames different 4cyl to 6cyl like TJ frames are?

The problems are:

Engine mounts don't match.
We will cut the old ones off and move them. It
requires a bit of fabrication of the towers.

The drivelines no longer match up.
We have installed a SYE for the rear.
We are going to have a driveline shop shorten the
front driveline.

We replaced the weak ax4 with an ax-15.

It's been a long time. The engine is in the Jeep. The driver's side engine mount is about an inch to far back. We are gonna run it this way and see how it works out keeping a carefully eye on it. The engine is from a 1996 xj. The wiring harness is from a 94 yj. The frame is from a 1991 yj. A lot of things don't match up. It's 2 steps forward and one step back. Drive lines matched up pretty good. We set the engine in the bay lined the gearshift up inside the car measured the driveline from the frame to the front of the driveshaft, then from the back of the drive shaft to make sure it was straight and then marked the engine mounts. Obviously not carefully enough. Doing wiring harness now.

Well it took forever but the dragon breathes. The engine mount was not too far back. It was tilted forward. So we fixed that. The hardest part of the build was swapping the 4 cylinder out. I couldn't find any information on cutting in the two new fuel injectors so i had to figure that one out.

Xtultegra wrote: ↑July 9th, 2020, 12:03 am Well it took forever but the dragon breathes. The engine mount was not too far back. It was tilted forward. So we fixed that. The hardest part of the build was swapping the 4 cylinder out. I couldn't find any information on cutting in the two new fuel injectors so i had to figure that one out.

Nice! That's great news. Any pictures? How's it run and drive?

At first the timing was way off. Thought I was a tooth off with distributor but it ended up being a bad crank position sensor. I'll post some pics soon.

Looks nice!