aw4 swap...in progress, hit a snag

hey guy's, anyways after my puegoet going out on me. i decided i had to pull it and do something. I got a complete donor vehicle with the aw4 in it. so i figure now is a good time to do a auto swap conversion.

i got the peugoet pulled out of my rig (88 xj 4.0) and am just slowly swapping things over from my donor. (also a 88 4.0)

where i'm stuck is i can't seem for the life of me to get the cable out from under the dash and threw the firewall. the gear selection cable for the auto trans that is. is there some sort of trick? or do i gotta remove something else from under the dash?
its wound in there so high and tight its rediculous. any help or encouragement appreciated.

Are the shifter cables on the later XJs shorter?

I noticed that the one in my 93 ZJ is pretty short and runs through the floor a bit in front of the shifter and does a quick u-turn down to the tranny. The 89 shifter cable is like 10' long and goes up the firewall, penetrates over by the brake master and then around in the engine bay. In hind-sight after wrestling with that cable for an hour, I should have grabbed a replacement cable for a 93 ZJ and drilled a hole in the tranny tunnel.

When I pulled the cable from the donor, I don't recall anything holding the cable under the dash, but the donor had the dash already partially pulled and the engine was out. The cable is pretty stiff and had a few sharp turns in it. I didn't bother with the shift interlock cable.

If you're transplanting the trans computer, a FSM will help figure out the wiring. It's really not that bad. As I recall it was only a few wires that I had to tie into the wiring harness. I didn't bother with the wires that go to the diagnostic connector, so it was really only +12, ign switched power, ground, and the TPS sensor.

ya i'm not gonna bother with the shift interlock cable either. probably just another PITA to get out of the donor.

well i'll keep at it trying to get that shift cable out. all else fails. a sawsall will be comming out and so will the dash

hey man, i see you've done this swap as well. can you fill me in more on what you did to get the TCU working? i've heard most poeple just swap entire engine harnesses. that to me just looks like alot of work. I could be wrong. is there any other way to do it?

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The trans computer harness is mostly self-contained except for the handful of wires I mentioned. I unhooked the TCU computer and pushed the connector back through the firewall. There is a large rubber plug around those wires. From there most of the wires go to two connectors that go down to the tranny. One is the NSS on the side of the tranny and the other to the tranny sensor/solenoid.

The other wires on the donor disappeared into the engine bay wiring harness. I started at the TPS and pulled those wires out of the harness. At this point, you've got most of it. A bundle of wires going to the TCU, two bundle to the tranny, three wires going to the still-attached TPS connector, and a few more going into the ening bay harness. Since I was at a pull-n-save and my patience was running thin, I pulled as much of the other wires out of the harness as I could and clipped them.

I used the FSM as I installed the harness to figure out where to wire the loose wires in.From memory, these other wires were:
- diagnostic connector. I didn't hook them up
- ground, black, there was a crimp connector in the harness with a bunch of other grounds
- +12volts and ignition hot, yellow and pink?
- power/comfort switch that goes back under the drives dash
- brake pedal switch that goes back under the drives dash
- reverse lights from the NSS connector, went to the brown(?) wire on the old connector
- start interlock from the NSS, didn't bother hooking up as the Jeep started anyway

I can send you the wiring schematic for the connector that has the wiring colors.

Or if you want a manually shifted tranny, you could look up Bretts setup which uses a variety of switches (rotary, paddle, or toggles) to manually control the tranny solenoids instead of dealing with the TCU.

hey thanks for the info. much appreciated.

if you wouldn't mind emailing me that schematic. it would be helpfull i'm sure.
heres my addy. [email protected]

thanks for the help. i'll post up once i get my swap all done. i'm just in the process of getting that shift cable out still and getting all the interior work swapped over. then gonna move onto the electronics. then just put the trans in.

well i finally got that cable out from under the dash. ended up having to remove the brake pedal bracket/assembly then it pulled out no problem.

made a little more progress this afternoon.
started dealing with the wiring and tcu.

so i took the TCU and wiring harness from the donor. Found the Tcu harness is wound up in the main harness quite deep. thought about splicing into mine. then said f'it. i'll just pull the entire harness. so i got that all out. and am just gonna go over the harness tonight and clean everything up. put some new wire loom and tape on it for good measure. Then it'll be off to putting into my jeep.

One question i got though. Is i pulled the entire engine harness. both sides of the main connector at the driver side firewall. now upon further inspection i noticed my good xj that i'm swapping this all into, actually has the second connector sitting there for the auto TPS. So do i need to actually swap that half of my wiring harness? or can i let it be. then just swap over the other half. the big bundle that runs along the firewall, goes into the pcm, then on into the TCM. my gut says i should be able to do this but just want to make certain before i got and duplicate work for myself.

thanks guys! its comming along!

anyone?

just swap all the stuff that's different

I did the same, I converted my 2wd, 5sd, MJ to 4wd, aw4. I kept the original harness and added the TPS + brackets to my TB. I only swapped out the harness for the ECU and TCU.

warrior said:

I did the same, I converted my 2wd, 5sd, MJ to 4wd, aw4. I kept the original harness and added the TPS + brackets to my TB. I only swapped out the harness for the ECU and TCU.

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ok cool thats exactly what i did to. cuz like i said i noticed that half of my engine harness actually had the second plug in just sitting there for the TPS. just gonna swap over the throttle body complete rather then taking the sensor off and readjusting it.

all in all this swap is getting close to the end. I've taken care of all the details upto the point of bolting on the new aw4 trans and putting my 231 on it.

honestly i dont' know how some of the guy's have done this without a donor vehicle beside them to take parts from. there was alot more to do then i expected in this swap.

well figured i'd update it. spent the majority of sat. getting the aw4 out of the donor and into mine.

all went pretty good. its all in and ready to fire up. i'm just wiating for my tranny cooler to get here so i can hook up the cooler lines and fill the tranny and Tc with fluid.

hopefully it fires up and works

well its finally done!

got the b&m cooler installed yesterday and started it up for the first time in over a week! fired up first try. took it for a test drive and all is well! just gotta monkey around with the exhaust. cuz now it seems the downpipe is rattling against the front driveshaft and is rather annoying.

WTG !!!

dizzymac said:

WTG !!!

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thanks

now to get these axles regeared and some bigger tires on

the fun never ends.