D30 Front Axle Swaps (Non Disco vs. Disco)

Well.. I've run into a bit of trouble here.. We blew up the rear end of my father's 89 xj about 3-4 weeks ago, and we replaced the rear axle with one out of an 88 xj limited with aw4 tranny, 242 t-case and 3.55's front and rear..

We were running the puegot tranny, np231 disconnect and 3.07s front and rear.

Since we weren't concerned at the time about the front axle differences (or actually.. didn't even think that there were differences.. ) We just did the rear axle swap and was planning on doing the front axle in a week or so.. We just pulled the front axle, engine, tranny and t-case off of the donor xj yesterday. Upon removing the front axle, I noticed a difference from anything I'd seen before and that was no disconnecting 4 wheel actuator..

What I'm getting at .. (and believe I've done searches on here about this since last night),

Can you swap the front non disconnecting front axle into a cherokee with a 231 with the vacumm for the disconnecting front axle and if so, what modifications need to be done.

I'm also sure I can find this info somewhere on this site, but.. Does anyone know exactly which trannys have which splines and which t cases are interchangable and such???

Such as .. Puegot 5spd, AX-15, AX-5, AW4, 242's vs 231's, etc, etc.. ???

I'm trying to figure out if it would be worth it to put full time 4 wheel drive on this jeep..

Basically the reason being is that in Buffalo NY, we tend to need 4 wheel most of the time in the winter.. so.. just put it in 4 wheel and not worry about it would be great.. especially because I think we're going to beef up the suspension and slap that plow on the front of her..

Oh well.

Let me know what you guys think..

I'm kinda up against a rock and a hard place on this one.

Thanks in advance.

Bill

there is no customizing from disco to non-disco. axle engagement is directly from the case.
as far as spline counts for diffs and trans......dunno

oops
i ment to type CASE and trans.
not diffs.

You will be fine. They did away with the vaccum disco completely on every XJ in 91 anyway, so not even chrysler thought it was neccesary.
The one you got it out of was a selec-trak (242 case) full/part time case so it did not have a disconnect.

Lots of people take out their disco axles on purpose to eliminate the part, will be doing that on my 89 this winter.

As far as plowing with an XJ I wouldn't think it would do very well at it. I would be afraid of the unibody not being up to the task.

Andy

I think I need to break this down a little further, just to make it make more sense to myself, and then maybe more people will understand what I'm trying to find out.

1.) I've got a disco axle on my 89 cherokee and the replacement axle I've got is a non disco axle with proper gearing, whereas the disco axle isn't the proper gearing.

2.) I've got the full time transfer case the np242 and I'd like to put it behind the puegot tranny, but I'm not sure of the splice counts and such.

3.) If I did put in the NP242, would I be able to buy a SYE kit for it. I've got one on the 231 in my jeep, but I'm not sure if I want to keep the 231.

4.) If I did put the non disco axle in my jeep, and tryed to run the current np231 transfer case, (with all the vacum hook ups and all), how could I convert the case to work, so I didn't have to worry about all the vaccum and such. or does this not make a difference... If I ran the t-case (that came with vacumm hookups) without hooking the vacumm up, would it make a difference? Do I need to have them hooked up or plugged into something? Can I just leave them open and not worry about it?
Will This affect anything else to do with the 4 wheel drive?

I hope that makes it more clear. .
thanks.

BTW.. Why in the world would they put numerically higher gears in the automatics and not the sticks? That doesn't make sense..

Bill

If you run a non-disco axle, then it doesn't matter when the vacuum tries to connect or disconnect the axle, it just won't be doing anything because the axle will always be connected. You can rip the vacuum linkage out or leave it there, won't make a bit of difference. Just throw the non-disco axle in there and rip out/cut/tie-off any loose vacuum pieces and call it good.

1: No problems with that man, go for it

2: Don't know...I'm ignorant.

3: As far as I know nobody makes a complete SYE kit for the 242, but many have just gotten a Tom Woods hack and tap kit. (Cut the output shaft, drill a hole in the center, tap it, and bolt the new yoke on)

4: No problems running the 231. The 231 does not use vacuum at all. The axle is engaged like this... You have a vacuum line that goes back to the TC. There's a little 4 port "vacuum switch" on the side of the transfer case, this is a simple ball actuated switch and slides across something on the inside (shifting linkage related ), basically it just tells vacuum where to go. On 2WD mode is sends vacuum to one of the three ports, the one that goes to the 2WD side of the shifting fork in the axle. In 4WD mode it sends it to two ports, one to tell it to go into 4WD at the axle, and another to activate the vacuum operated switch for the 4WD part time swtich.

I plan on getting rid of my axle disconnect in my '89. To do this I plan to block off the vacuum ports on that switch, and only have vacuum routed to the dash light switch (no real reason you need that light though, I'm just a little bit detail oriented )

Not sure why they gave auto's low gears...personally it'd be nice if they just gave all of them 3:55's at least! (well, except for four poppers, those deserve 4:10's at the highest!)

Sequoia

Both the Peugeot transmission and 242 were available in both 21 and 23 spline units. You're going to have to count them, or just see if they fit together or not.

I think it's possible to swap the input shaft from the 231 into the 242, if you need to.

If you can, I'd get the SYE taken care of prior to throwing the t-case in (231 or 242). Easier to do on the bench.

I believe Currie Enterprises and Advanced Adaptors make SYE kits for your 242. Call Tom Woods, he sells them both.

Crunch

On the gearing I think I know. With the manual you have a 4:1 low gear. With an auto you only have a 1.75:1 low. Even allowing for the torque converter's effective torque multiplication your overall takeoff ratio is better with the manual.

4 X 3.07 = 12.28 Manual
1.75 X 1.5(+/-) x 3.55 = 9.34 Auto

If you assume that the torque converter is worth a torque mult. ratio of two then the manual and auto are dead even.

I swapped in a 231 (out of a disco jeep) in place of a 242...all I did was take two pieces of rubber hose 3" lg and 'bridge' the 4 ports on the tcase vac switch. I was too cheep to buy caps and had the hose handy.

When I converted my MJ 231 with disco front axe to non disco, I left the harness intact, and took the fork off the disco motor...this allowed the dash light to show "Part Time" when selected. One copld block the ports on the harness off, and suspend it up out of harms way.

The 242 has an electric sw that lights the dash lights up for 'Part Time" and "Full Time". I doubt your 231/Peugot Jeep has the wiring in there for that...The dashlight lens and bulb cluster will have the provisions to add it, just no wiring.

As for spline count...All Peugot 5 speed Jeeps have 21 spline 231s. This trans came behind 4.0l in 87 and went away in 90? and was replaced by the AX15. All 4.0L AX15s are 23 spline 231s.

242s were never offered under a manual trans Jeep. (not saying they won't work, just that they never came that way) My 88 242 is very vague feeling when shifted into 4-hi PT and 4-hi FT...without the dash lights I'd be clueless which of those modes it was in, until it bound up and blew apart Neutral & 4-lo are easy to tell apart from the others...

My 89 XJ with AW4 had a 21 spline 242...I'm unclear when the 23 spline came into play. Some 89-90 242s may be 21 OR 23 Spline...ya really just have to count. I think it's safe to say that all 87/88 231s and 242s will be 21 Spline.

HTH