5 on 5 lug swap question, what to do

so I got the lift on the wifes xj done tonight, horray, just put the wheels on and I'm set, only to find out I got royally hooked up by a fellow jeeper in wilmington nc on CL. He lied about the lug pattern on the wheels, I never thought to check because he said they came off the xj he delivered them in, and in my haste, I didn't even bother measuring the lug pattern before I got the tires mounted (foolish I know, but I've never had someone show up in the vehicle they claimed the wheels came off of and lie like that)

so, on to my question

I'm planning on doing the wj front knuckle/brake swap, I'm aware the whole housing doesn't swap over, but what I'm wondering is if I can take a complete knuckle and hub and swap all of it over to the xj, and keep the 5 on 5 lug pattern in the process, so my wheels will work and I don't have to redrill the rotors ect. plus I would be able to go to a 5 on 5 for the rear, and open up some more rear axle options. Honestly I'm new to 4wd and the associated drive train issues, so if this is a stupid question please forgive me, but I haven't been able to find the info I wanted because the search doesn't take his on small words like wj and 5 on 5. Thanks

Searching methods: http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=80053

5 on 5 or 5 on 5.5?

The seller may have been working from ignorance--the PO of his XJ swapped axles, and he is oblivious to it. Not making excuses for him, but there are some ignorant people out there stumbling through life.

How about some adapters?

joe_peters said:

but there are some ignorant people out there stumbling through life.

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Including buyers!

I don't want to get catty with you, but when someone asks something fairly specific, and non-obvious, and you put up a link to the search faq, that comes across kind of smart a**ed, and really just makes it look like you didn't find anything either, so since I got lucky and stumbled upon it.....

Rich69 posted a link in one of the wj hub conversion threads...
http://www.jeepsrus.org/index.asp?p=Tech_WJhubs001

easy question, but I've only managed to find that one link to an obscure article from the 9th page of a months old thread and that was just luck and looking for something else, I'm sure several people already knew this, but it just isn't something that searches well, and although you can swap these part around, to some people different lug pattern = not compatible, so its hard to sort through the chaff to the good info to find out it should actually work, even calling jks they weren't sure if it would work or not

anyway, it seems like you can use the whole wj knuckle, if your cool with having a different lug pattern or redrilling the wj hub

RCP Phx said:

Including buyers!

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including morons who make noncontributing comments on forums, I suppose you think "yeah" and "you said it" constitute intelligent commentary as well

and yeah, he showed up in a stock xj, said he'd just pulled the wheels off, and even had the fifth wheel mounted up in his xj spare carrier on his roof

what this tells me is that he had gone to the effort to put a wrong lug wheels into the carrier, since none of them could have fit his jeep.

and no he didn't have 5 on 5 lug axles, because his jeep had the same factory wheels my xj had when I pulled up.

looks like it will work out in my favor anyway, but yeah I got hosed