My 96 to 98 conversion

I just picked up a 98 parts xj. Previous owner bought it just for the 4.0 for his yj so it's missing the engine, and the unibody is smashed in up front. Plan is to swap the whole interior, roof, doors and hatch over to my current 96. The 98 has the infinity stereo and power everything, and is in mint shape inside (even still has that new car smell!).

Has anyone ever done this before? I saw the thread on comanche club on "project onyx" but didn't really get answers from it.

Will the plugs that go from the engine bay harness to the interior harness plug in, or will I have to swap in the engine bay wiring harness too? I'm hoping they are the same since the 96 is obd2. If I do end up swapping in the engine bay wiring harness, what will I have to modify for that?

My roof is rusting out so I'm going to chop it off and swap in the newer roof, along with the hatch and tail lights from the 98. That seems pretty strait forward as seen here: http://naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=901236&highlight=replacement+roof

This will be a build thread of sorts, but not until it warms up a little more. It was 6 below this morning with a high of 15 :bawl: might get up to 40 this weekend though :roll:

Here's what I did so far(sorry for the terrible cell phone pics):







this is what it looked like when I brought it home:



I'm going to swap the front clip over eventually to finish off the conversion.

good luck with your roof swap- that sounds like a PITA.

Shouldn't be too bad. Sawzall, welder, 30 pack and a couple buddies and it should be a one weekend deal. That's the easy part, the dash is what I am not looking forward to.