At this point you will be ready to pull your old motor. To give some perspective on why i think that all of you guys can do this swap, i had never ever pulled a motor before this swap. This might be pretty commonplace knowledge to some of you but im including it for people who might have never pulled a motor before.
First thing youre going to want to do is to take the truck up to a shop and have the AC Lines evacuated. Do this while the truck is still running and driving. Do not just open one of the lines and let it leak out. When you get home, remove your Tcase skid plate and your radiator splash guard thing. put all of the old bolts back into their holes so you dont lose them.
Next (and the order of this stuff doesnt really matter) youll want to drain your transfer case, transmission, engine oil, power steering, and coolant. When you drain this stuff, leave something under it and let it drain over night so it gets to drip as much stuff as you can out of it.
While you are letting everything drain, start taking off the front of your truck. You can leave your fenders on, but your front bumper needs to come off (if you still have the stock bumper riveted in place you can leave it on, its not mandatory), Remove the two headlight surrounds, then remove the center grille assembly. Use painters tape and tape all of the little screws to the parts so you dont lose them. Once those are out, remove your lower valence and put the 6 bolts back into the fenders so you dont lose them. From here you can remove the upper radiator support bar thing that is right in front of your radiator. Go put them in a safe area, you wont be touching these again for quite a while. Now you can carefully remove your AC Condenser, save the rubber grommets and bolts, set aside. Do the same for your radiator and your Drier. You should have full access to the front of your motor now.
From here you need to just start disconnecting stuff. The easiest way to go about it is find the electrical connectors that are connecting the engine to the body. When you disconnect something, put painters tape on it and number it, write down the corresponding number in a booklet or something. On a desmogged motor there will only be like 17 things you have to unplug. dont forget about the plugs under the passenger side of the motor on the starter and the ones connecting to the transfer case. You will also need to disconnect the fuel and return lines and remove your intake. The ground wire coming off the body next to your battery connects to the passenger side motor mount. I just cut that one, it was hard to get in there. Lastly remove your speedo cable from your T case.
***when the motor is completely out, you will never ever again have a chance to replace your speedo cable this easily. I highly recommend you replace it now, even if it is working. Thats if you are keeping your stock gauges. If you are switching to GPS gauges or something you can remove it as well. The stock gauges to me look 10000000x better than any of the after market gauges, but thats just like my opinion man
Now get a buddy to help you remove the hood to store somewhere safe.
Once you have everything disconnected, go back and check again to be sure. Get your engine hoist and connect it to the hooks on the motor and put light pressure on it. Put a jack under the transfer case and also put light pressure on it. Unbolt the motor mounts and disconnect the crossmember from the frame and then remove the crossmember from the trans. At this point you should have everything disconnected. You can now remove the motor/trans/tcase in one long piece. It is helpful to get a buddy working the jack behind the t case and one person lifting the motor as they pull on the jack. Youll pull the engine up and pull it back some. Once the engine is up and into the radiator core support you can start lifting the motor higher to get the t case to clear the core support as you pull it out. This sucks, and was probably one of the worst parts of the swap for me. Make sure you find some way to secure the chain to the hook. When the hook jumps a link on the chain you will die inside a little bit. What i did was use a smaller chain and wrapped it around the hook and used mini D Rings to secure the rings so it wouldnt move.
Once its out, set it on the ground near your other motor in your garage or wherever, and support it by the oil pan bolts with wood and by the trans or t case. Be careful because the oil pans on the 60s suck and might break if you put the weight of the motor onto the sump part.
Your engine bay will look kind of like this:
2 motors side by side
**if you are using a H55f with your swap and its already connected to your t case disregard this next stuff. If you are using a h55f and its not connected to the case, this will pertain to you. For all advance/marks adapters this will apply
From here you will want to disassemble your transfer case from your transmission. This is pretty simple, just take all the bolts out until you get both sides off. Putting it back together is more important. Here are a few very helpful videos of assembly that will help you with removal
@orangefj45 has a great video
@OTRAMM also has a great video
Once you have the transfercase removed, sell your old motor and trans or whatever. Selling your old stuff can help offset some of the cost of the swap and could help another cruiser owner out. Karma is real and trust me, with the swap youll need some good karma
anyways, once the transfer case is removed, clean it with some gas or brake cleaner, take every bolt and run it on a brass wire brush to get the old crap off of the threads. Some people paint the outsides of the case, the PTO cover, and the trans output shaft cover at this point. It makes a swap look really pretty and professional.
So depending on what transmission you are running, at this point it gets a little different. If you are using the 4l60e or 4l80e or 6l80e you will use an adapter to mate the transmission to your transfer case. The adapter you will use for a H55f i believe is on the bellhousing side. If you are using a 4l60/4l65/4l80 etc, you HAVE TO USE A 2WD TRANSMISSION!!
4l60e (1997 and newer) to FJ60 19 spline split transfercase - Advance adapters PN: 50-0408A
4l60e (1993-1996) to FJ60 19 spline split transfercase -Advance Adapters PN: 50-0408
4L80e to FJ60 19 spline split transfercase - Advance Adapters PN: 50-1701
6L80e to FJ60 19 spline split transfercase - Advance Adapters PN: 50-9612
GM NV4500 to FJ60 19 spline split transfercase - Advance Adapters PN 50-0214
LS to Toyota H55f - Advance adapters PN: 713027-EK
From here forward, i will be talking about mating a 4l60e to a split case using the marks/Advance Adapter (they are the same thing). This is a really really good time to buy a transfer case rebuild kit from @orangefj45 or @cruiseroutfit
The adapter piece is pretty straight forward. Youll want to follow the GOD AWFUL instructions in the kit. You basically take off the cone looking output shaft cover from the transmission, measure from the trans to a spot on the output shaft and cut it off. The spud shaft will slide onto the cut output shaft and convert the gm output to toyota. I wont go too much into detail unless you need me to, but here are a few things to remember while you are doing this.
- you can always cut more but you cant add material. Measure a lot before you make the cut.
-Set the spacing for the VSS sensor after installing the smaller hexagon piece. Before installing the larger piece, or else youll have to take it back apart. to set the gap. use feeler gauges for this.
- Know which (toyota) output gear you have (top left gear when looking at all of the gears in the case), and whether or not you will need to use the AA little spacer or not. More than likely... youll need to use their spacer that they provide. I misread the instructions, didnt use it, and nuked my transfer case. When they are talking about the OEM spacer in the instructions, they are not talking about the longer PTO spacer. They are talking about the earlier transfer cases that had a spacer for the oil seal to ride on.
NOTE!!!!!! The top left gear, input gear, in this picture is WRONG. This is what happens when you dont use the spacer if you need to. See how it is so inset to the case body, and the gear isnt perfectly lined up to the idler gear? The input gear will be spaced out slightly from the case and will be flush with the idler gear when its installed correctly. This is what will happen if you dont use the spacer:
This is how it should look:
To assemble the transfer case, follow one of the two videos i posted above. Note, both Georg and otramm use anerobic sealer and not silicone rtv for the case halves. Install the PTO cover last, look inside, there should be NO space on the trans output shaft where your pto spacer is, your thrust washer on your idler shaft should not spin more than 1 or 2 degrees, and you should be able to turn everything by spinning the output of the transfer case.
*** When you are installing the little bracket plate for your transfer case shifter, you will need to make some modifications to it. First youll want to cut the top two mounting ear things off the top of it. Im not really sure what these are for but they are kind of in the way, so I just cut them off of mine so the plate doesnt even make that upper angle and its flat.
If you were to use the 3 supplied spacers in the kit with the bolts to mount it to the side of the adapter, The plate will be spaced out too far. You will notice that the little plastic cube on the bottom of the shifter arm doesnt sit down in the notch on the High/Low shift fork on the transfer case. Here are a few examples:
So as you can see theres like a 5mm gap. Youll want to take your 3 steel spacers and measure 5mm off one of the ends and cut it as straight as humanly possible. Band saw is the right tool for this. Once you cut the 5mm off save the end pieces that you just cut off. Now you will use the allen head bolt, a washer, the small side you cut off, then the plate, and then the longer side of the spacer in that order to mount the mounting plate onto the side of the adapter. This will pull the entire plate in 5mm closer to the side of the adapter. You still need to use both pieces of the spacer though if you want to reuse the bolt that came in the kit, thats why you are putting the smaller one on the outside of the plate and the longer one on the inside. Keeping this smaller piece will still allow you to use the same bolt. If youd rather not use both cut pieces, you can just get a bolt thats 5mm shorter or one that wont bottom out in the threaded hole of the adapter.
So the trick with shortening the steel spacers brings the mounting plate inboard 5mm and at the same time brings that little plastic square thing into sit flush in the shift fork but it messes up the angle and orientation of the shifter on the pivot shaft thing. Think of this shifter arm as a right triangle. To remedy this you need to add 5ish mm to the inside of the shifter arm on the bolt that it pivots onto (the one that bolts into the side of the plate that you bolted to the t case adapter). The easiest way to do this is to use 2 flat 16mm washers and a new wave washer. I only had one 16mm washer on hand so i went 16mm split lock washer > 16mm flat washer > 16mm wave washer > Shifter arm > 16mm wave washer > Smaller washer > then finally the nut. Its a lot of washers and stuff in there but it works flawlessly and takes up the weird misspacing. If you just use flat washers and no wave washers when you tighten the outer bolt it will cinch the arm down and you wont be able to move it.
You should have something like this afterwards:
Its still not perfect vertically, but thats on Advance adapters, they should have mounted the plate down 2-3 mm from where it is supplied in the kit. This advance adapters kit kind of sucks.
Reading the AA directions or looking at the pictures online can be a little daunting but its not that bad. Just make sure you dont make the mistake i did with the spacer and youll be all good.
Once everything is assembled, give it a little bit of time to dry and fill it with gear oil to make sure you dont have any leaks, and its easier to fill while its sitting in your garage. I used redline 75w90. Use whatever brand you like best.
At this point, your motor is ready to be installed into your 60, however your 60 is not ready yet.
Is there anything I should keep from the old Fj60? A/C lines, etc?
