BA-10 Peugeot to AX-15

I’m planning a BA-10 Peugeot to AX-15 swap. I know that I need a new Tcase input but I’m not sure which one. Clearly I need a 23 spline but I have heard that there are some different lengths and bearing set ups. http://www.novak-adapt.com/catalog/231_input_gears.htm Dose anyone know what the real deal is here. Also the tranny I got has a bell housing with the internal slave. Half my problem with my current set up is that the #$&%in’ slave has gone out twice in the last year so I would like to take this opportunity to put in an external slave, but I hear they have problems as well. Dose anyone know a reason this would not be a good idea or why it would not work? I’m also interested I hearing from anyone who has first hand knowledge of this kind of swap. TIA

The best way out would be to get the bellhousing from a 93 and up cherokee, about the TC, yes you need a 23 spline input TC, and for the money involved, you could just get a TC from a Junkyard. Go with the external slave and you will be happy, if you have any questions feel free to PM me or email me at [email protected], i just did this swap. Also you will need a shift linkage for a Transfer case from a cherokee with the AX-15, as the linkages are different. let me know if you have any more ????

ravi

A local jeep bone yard quoted me $75 for the input thing but just swapping the tcase rather than having to pull it all apart and change the input, would make the swap a lot smoother. They want $250 for the bell and all the clutch stuff, not including the master slave combo. Then I need the linkage and a new tranny mount. Did you put yours in your self or did you have it done. I can’t decide if I should attempt it. I got one quote for $500 to do the work. I think I need to do a bit more scrounging around to get some of the cost out of this thing. I got a good deal on the tranny but its going to cost me a fortune if I’m not carefull. How do you like the Centerforce? Was it worth the cash?

I got mine done by a mechanic i kow for $250, try car-part.com, you can get the bellhousing for dirt cheap, about the centerforce clutch, i had put a new centerforce clutch in my peugeot, 3 months and 200 miles later my clutch slave went out, since i did not have a 5th gear i thought it was a good time to swap the Ax-15 as i had it sitting for a year, now i needed a new clutch so went and bought the dual friction, personally i havent noticed any difference between the Centerforce I & the dual friction except the price difference.
BTW anyone here want to buy a new centerforce clutch set(comes with clutch, pressure plate and disc) for $50, its a steal of a deal.

ravi

Her is another question. Do you have to do something at the firewall to make the new Master fit? It looks like the new one has two studs on the master and the old one has a stud on the master and a stud on the firewall? Anyone have any wisdom here?
The other issue I have heard of is the pilot bearing. Someone said you need to use one out of a CJ but if I’m using all XJ part shouldn’t I be able to stay with an XJ pilot bearing?

I have some parts

I have a bell housing, clutch, flywheel,master and slave cylinder, throw out bearing, fork, clutch, and pressure plate from a 99 TJ that had an ax15 if that would work for you. I also have a 231 transfercase from the TJ also but I sold the ax15. It had 19K miles on it when it was wrecked.
Dave

Bronco said:

Her is another question. Do you have to do something at the firewall to make the new Master fit? It looks like the new one has two studs on the master and the old one has a stud on the master and a stud on the firewall? Anyone have any wisdom here?
The other issue I have heard of is the pilot bearing. Someone said you need to use one out of a CJ but if I’m using all XJ part shouldn’t I be able to stay with an XJ pilot bearing?

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I used the pilot bushing from the CJ, its for a $1.99 at autozone, go with that, as far as mounting the master, you do have to drill a new hole, this was the only time when i was not there when my mechanic was working on it. looks like you are getting a good deal from the above post, i would grab all i can from him.

ravi

Rav, can you fill me in on why the XJ bearing won’t work? Or is it just that the CJ one is cheaper? Can I just use the one in there now? And if not how bout the one from a post 96?

Bronco said:

Rav, can you fill me in on why the XJ bearing won’t work? Or is it just that the CJ one is cheaper? Can I just use the one in there now? And if not how bout the one from a post 96?

Click to expand...

I dont know if you have read this article or not but he descrbies the difference in the bearing, to be frank i am not good at all this technical stuff:-
http://www.jeeptech.com/convtrans/ax15swap.html

Ravi

Ok update. I’ve got most of the stuff still waiting for the tranny itself but I have the rest. I’m going to set up the firewall end of the hydraulics and then take the rest to have a mechanic put it in.

I’ve got all the old hydraulics out and I’m looking at making the changes to put the new stuff in. The new master has two studs rather than one stud and one hole. Also the two studs are not vertical from each other like the old one they are at about 15* or so, and they are quite a bit farther apart from each other. So change one hole in the old part to a stud spread them out a bit and rotate them about the axis of the cylinder 15* or so and you have what I’m looking at. So that would be fine and dandy but it looks like the bottom hole is going to interfere with a big electric plug thing that goes thought to the fuse box. Anyone who has done this have any help here?

Next issue. In the current set up there are two heavy metal strips that come down from the bracket that holds the pedals The master is bolted to them and the firewall at the same time. I’m thinking that they keep the force between the firewall and the peddle from being applied to the peddle mounts. The easiest thing to do would be to just cut them off and drill my new holes and be done with it but I like to at least try to do thing right the first time. Did any of you do anything to reinforce that area or find a way to leave these things in place?

Lastly it looks like the stroke on the new cylinder in maybe ¾ an inch longer than the old one I’m hoping that this will just result in a slightly longer pedal stroke did any one have any problems here?

I didn't switch out the master cylinder when I replaces my old BA-10/15 with the AX-15. I had a local hydraulic shop build a stainless line from the stock master cylinder to the new external slave cylinder. The new line solved the problem of the pin adapters and the questionable plastic hydraulic line and it would solve your other issues also. Cost me $40 bucks and save a ton of headaches. Good Luck.

Woody

I'm in the middle of this swap right now ('98 AX-15 into an '89) and I want to keep the old clutch master cylinder instead of swapping in a new one and was curious if i could just solder the fitting that goes into the ax-15 slave cylinder to the old hydraulic line from the old clutch master cylinder. I went to NAPA and they didn't have an answer and this is what the owner of a transmission shop told me to do. Also theres 3 electrical sensors, one for the speed, one for the reverse, and I can't figure out what the 3rd one is, it comes out of a round gold bolt on the passenger side, should I just not worry about that one? As for the speed sensor I had to take the manual BA-10 sensor and swap the plastic gear off the computer controlled AX-15 onto it to make it work, which I assume it will? I will then fab a new crossmember to work with the already existing bolt holes in the "frame".

Bigger, I wouldn't mess with the old solid hard hydraulc line. Yes, you can get the fitting that will mate with the new AX-15 external slave soldered to the line from the stock master cylinder, that is what I had done, but I used a new line. I would strongly suggest going with a new braided stainless line, if I remember corectly the stock hard line will be too short due to the increased length of the AX-15.

As far as the electrical sensors go I'm sorry I can't help much. I put a '97 AX-15 into a '88 and I think the electrical sensors are a bit different on the two. If you don't get any ideas from the rest of the group shoot me an email and I'll take a look and let you know what I did to make it work. All of my electrical functions work correctly after the install. I used my old T/C and replaced the input shaft with a new shaft from A.A. that had the correct spline count (23 spline if I remember correctly). I didn't want to give up my Tera Low 4:1 gears in my T/C. so the spedo wasn't an issue, I just stayed with my mechanical spedo setup in the old style T/C.

The new AX-15 does sit back approx. 4 inches farther than the stock tranny. You can tap new threads in the additional set of holes in the frame for the stud/bolt fastners and use the stock cross-member. If you can get the 4X4 actuator linkage from the AX-15 rig it is a big help. I used some of the brackets from the '97 and some from my '88 to make it all work, and it looks stock, no hacking and welding necessory. I decided to go with an aftermarket crossmember that also incorporated a 1 inch drop into the design so I wouldn't need a cheeze spacer kit to drop my cross-member. I went with Rusty's cross-member and T/C skid. There are several good ones on the market, I would do a little research. Good Luck.

Woody

I don’t know this for sure but I'm thinking that it will not work to solder the new slave because the external slaves have a plastic or at least plastic coated line.

Woody Do you have any numbers on how long you needed to make yours to reach? Maybe on the paperwork. Dose the old master have the same volume as the new one? Do you have any trouble there??

Bronco,
I can't get the measurements on the line until I get home tonight. All I did was, once the new tranny was in place I used a piece of solid wire (#12 electrical wire) to figure out the length and timing (position of the fittings at the ends of the line in relation to the line itself) of the fittings for the new line. I took that with the old line and the new external slave to a local hydraulic shop (House of Hose in Spokane, WA) and they built an new stainless line that works great.

The hardest part was bleeding the system. I ended up using a wooden dowel to compress the piston in the slave cylinder with a big C-clamp to hold it in place so I could bleed the system. I would let the dowel out a little at a time as I developed pressure in the hydraulic system. It took some time, but I haven't had to rebleed the system now in two years. I was never so lucky with the internal POS that was used on the BA-10/15, I was always loosing my clutch with the stock system always at the worst times. Good Luck.

Woody

Bronco,

Check out this tech article from CherokeeAmerica.com
http://www.off-road.com/jeep/cherokee/xjtech/gears/trannyswap/trannyswap.html

Woody

Ok three questions for you guy that have done this.



First: Did you just tap the holes that are in the frame already to move the cross member back or did you reinforce it somehow?



Second: How did you handle the exhaust mount that was part of the BA-10 mount but not included with the ax15 mount?



Third: Did anyone NOT use the CJ pilot bearing? Are there other options? I'm concerned by this ” It was a little longer in depth to the 87 but it fit the input shaft of the trans and was real close to the outside diameter of the 87 pilot bearing” from the off-road.com. it seems that if its real close, that it doesn’t fit.

1. I tapped the existing holes and didn't do any reinforcement of the holes. I figured that if the tapped holes failed I would weld in studs to the frame, but so far so good.

2. Good question - I had forgotten about that. I welded the round bar stock from the AX-15 mounting system to the old BA-10/15 mount that attaches to the exhaust at the Cat. I also used the part that the round rod slides into from the AX-15 that attaches at the tranny/cross-member area. This works good and looks stock.

3. It works! The CJ pilot bushing fits fine as far as dia. goes. It is a little longer than stock, but doesn't interfere with the input shaft at all. Personally, I like the bushing better than the stock bearing setup. My Jeep always squealed under hard acceleration with the old BA-10/15 tranny and stock bearing. I thought my input shaft was going out. When I tore it apart the stock bearing was powered and a local tranny shop suggested I go with the solid bushing, which solved the squealing problem.

Several on this board have made this swap and I hope they shed a little light on their approach to solving the problems they had. I haven't heard of anybody making this swap that were disapointed. The AX-15 tranny isn't a NV-4500, but it's a hell of a lot better that the BA-10/15. Good Luck.

Woody

PS: I think this thread should have been on the Mod Tech forum, I bet you would have gotten more input over there.