She breathes Rocky mountain air again. This has been no small task for the inexperienced me, none the less mostly alone labor wise. Though, I'm plenty glad I haven't taken this to a shop for the insane price of the work, 5,000-6000$ in Colorado for most places I called. An engine swap is costly, tideous, and time consuming either way you go about it, shop or not. Depending on what route one is to take, I did like the ability to have eyes on and study which parts I thought ide like to replace. A shop i dont think will quite do this in your favor because you will either coin out for a damn good replacement, or you will choose a more economical route, either way the shop will want as much$ as they can score, and they will want your vehicle out of the shop asap.
All said and done I've currently forked out under 2k for engine, header, plugs, fluids, paint, cap/rotor, gaskets, new hardware, upstream 02, likely a tps mopar for the remaining p0122 code. P1391 and new CEL pending scan, p1391 was listed as unconfirmed on bluedriver.
This has been good on the wallet comparatively, but in no way has this been a process to save time, at least for a newb like myself. The forums always say "try reading". I wish this was always the solution for those of us that are trying to dig through jeep issues. There are Many many threads on topics that pertain to all kinds of issues. In the few months I have been working through this swap and trouble shooting, ive learned and read that much of what is started on threads, never concludes nor adds a resolve for said issue.
To those pondering as to if you should attempt this project, I say go for it, so long as you have no time constraints. It's manageable alone, I removed the engine/ installed alone. It will take time and lots of up/down crawling under the jeep haha.
The installation portion of my project is now over, the engine is in, the jeep runs, and I have driven it.
The jeep ran fine before this project and everything worked perfectly fine. Upon install there have been many hurdles that kept arising and more continue to, even after using know good parts. This project has had no start issues, broken bolts in the block, distributor issues, poor running issues (
https://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1153110 ) and currently on another thread transmission issues (
https://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1153278 ) The hurdles continue, the project continues in a new portion of the drive train, and a p1391 code that the blue driver has not confirmed (driving has been smooth) though I did get a CEL tonight that I need to scan in the morning ( cps,ckps are 1yr old Mopar)
This thread isn't as clean and clear as I imagined from the start, but perhaps this is for the better, for those that may want to swap engines and can see that nothing is guaranteed, any issues can arise.
To those of you that have helped with giving your knowledge and advice, And your tolerance as I've been loosing my lid through this whirlwind, I Thank You Greatly! It is easy to forgot how some answers to small questions go a long way for some of us still learning about these vehicles, and that help is appreciated immensely.
After reading, reading, reading, asking?, reading, asking?,reading and hitting a dead end, some of you out there have time spent knowledge that reading just cant replace.
* I owe a Very humble special Thank You! to Hypoid for helping me to this point. You Sir are responsible for making this possible and my hats off to you.