JK engine swap writeup

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So after having done two engine swaps on a JK in quick succession I thought I'd do a writeup, the first motor had been drowned and I found out after it milkshaked the oil and only ran on a couple of cylinders, a second engine showed up this week and I had the fun all over again.

A couple of points:

The two top bolts on the bellhousing, roughly level with the heads are really tight. I needed a breaker bar with a piece of RHS on it to loosen them.

You will need a good pivoting handle ratchet to make getting to those bolts easier.

Drop the engine in the chassis to get enough clearance to get to the top bolts, its best if you also remove the mounting plates for the engine mounts as this allows more drop. The pic below shows how much clearance you get with the engine dropped


Removal prep - Drop the front tailshaft, remove the starter motor, I removed the heat shields from the manifolds to give me somewhere to sling from.
Zip tie the power steering pump to the drivers side guard, unbolt and support the A/C compressor, no need to degas. Photos of how the heat shields including the drivers side one which has the engine earths (3 of) behind it.


You dont need to remove the oxygen sensors or any wiring on the main engine loom. The only electrical connections tethering the engine to the bodd loom are the EGR system, the starter motor and the earths. The body looms are held in place on a bracket that bolts to the passengers side head. One bolt and this moves enough to give access, the drivers side bell housing bolts also holds a bracket for cable looms. Picture below showing the wiring that you can't see until the engine is out.


Aside from that removing the engine is no harder than an older vehicle and if you can do a Holden or ford the jeep should be easy, if time consuming.
Estimates for my time were about 3 hours to remove and probably the best part of a day to refit, although I did have to swap the flywheel and clutch as the second motor was an auto.



Happy to answer any questions as I couldn't find many how-to's even on the US sites.

Regards,
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Oh, and as to the reason why I was replacing the engine, we got 352,000 km from the old 3.8 before a blown head gasket resulted in no compression on number 3. Rebuild costs quoted were similar to replacement but I couldn't find a workshop that was able to do the rebuild before December. Just doing the head gasket was probably a pointless exercise without doing a full rebuild on an engine with over 300K on it.

Regards,
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