Gathering 5 speed swap parts, need some help

Agreen said:

I need to figure out how to keep cruise control:



So if I trick the ECU into thinking the AW4 is there, I'll need to wire the NSS to the clutch switch. If I do that, it will think I'm in park or neutral while driving (clutch engaged) and the cruise control won't work.

Click to expand...

Ah, you're right. The park/neutral wire from the NSS goes to both the trans computer and the ECU. So you'd want to grab that wire (black with white-stripe according to a 1999 FSM) and connect to the clutch switch. It needs to be grounded for the starter to run. You could just ground it, but cruise wouldn't cancel and you'd be able to start it without pushing the clutch.

I think I got it figured out. Maybe. I just drove 5 hours (yes, in the super smooth riding, 3" RC suspension, 31" tires XJ) and had lots of time to think about it.

Taking the 'park' wire (I haven't looked at the wiring diagram while driving) and run it to the clutch switch. It's only made when fully depressed, so that will simulate park. Let go of the clutch and it's 'no longer in park'. At least to the TCM it's not. I'll toss some 15ish ohm resistors on the wires for the trans solenoids and hopefully that's enough for the TCM to be happy. I need to go back and see if the cruise takes a look at the ISS or the OSS. Hopefully it's just looking at the VSS from the transfer case and everything is gonna be easy.

Unfortunately, I won't have time to even turn the first bolt for 2 more weeks. The suspense is killing me. I'm so ready to finally no longer have an automatic daily. Since 2003, every vehicle (and I've owned a lot) has been a manual transmission until the XJ, which I just could NOT find one. And finally when I did, the value was about 4x that of an automatic, so I figured it wouldn't be so bad. Nah man. It's painful every day. I just can't explain it, but I just can't stand them.

I'm pretty sure the cruise function only looks at the VSS. I don't think the ISS/OSS are wired to the ECU at all.

So Friday is the day. I finally have all the stuff I need, and I'll have a few days off to work on it. Meanwhile at work, I've been reading up about others' experiences.

https://naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?p=246473431

Long version short, this guy did the swap and he had issues with it running like crap when he pushed the clutch pedal. As much as I have sat and thought about this, I can't see the difference between ECUs causing it to bog down in "park" when the clutch pedal is pushed in. The only thing I could see happening is that the IAC would give it a little higher idle and maybe a slightly richer fuel mixture to compensate for the added rotating assembly weight (torque converter and pump).

Swap started Friday. It started great, and I just took my time and got the AW4 pulled, got everything cleaned up and was working on some small things here and there. Got called into work Saturday all day, then it poured rain all day Sunday. So not much progress has been made.

I will say that the NP231 to AX-15 year split concern was sorta valid, but incorrect. The input of the NP231 could have been 3" longer and still not bottom out on anything. There's plenty of room. What did need to get clearances was 3 little ribs on the TC input bearing retainer. There's another thread I started about that.

Speaking of bearing retainers. Since I have a 1990 transmission, I wanted the external slave. I had already pulled a 1997 bell housing and fork about a month before I got the transmission, so I figured all I needed was the hydraulics and the TOB. I also needed the input bearing retainer from the 97 trans as well, which was (fortunately) still there on the 2wd trans I pulled the bell housing from.

Today I'm working on the interior. Getting the pedals swapped, removing the auto shifter assembly, transferring over to the manual stuff. Good times. Also, I don't have the long arm/short arm on my clutch pedal. I guess they changed it at some point, so mine just has a single long arm and a pushrod mount point on it. So the only modification I need to make now is drill the 3 holes under the dash and mount it up.

Lots of work ahead. Hopefully I can figure out Flickr image hosting. It's still not letting me use the

Ok, so it's drivable. I don't have a front driveshaft, and I still need to work on modifying the linkage, but everything else is done.

Thoughts:

The pedal assembly sucked. Plain and simple. I separated the clutch pedal from the brake and tried them separately. What I found easiest is to install the brake bracket first without the pedal. Then slide the clutch assembly in (with the long bolt installed) and then assemble it again. It sucks no matter what, but thats the only way I could get it together.

I didn't realize until I was about to put it all together that the 90 transmission mount bracket has the half moon exhaust hanger. My 98 has the circular mount. I had to drop the cross member, pull the mount bracket, drill the hanger off and mount my circular hanger with some #6 bolts (and loctite).

Since the driveshafts from the 90 were beat up by the forklift, I installed a hack&tap SYE and used my automatic front driveshaft. I bought the CV yoke from Northern Drive line for about $80 shipped. I punched the center out, cut off about 5/8" from the yoke and right at 9/16" from the output of the t-case. It didn't require much cutting since the manual trans is 1.5" shorter than the auto. The original automatic driveshaft DOES fit, but only has about 1" of spline engagement (mine is lifted 3") and I wasn't comfortable with that.

I have a source for a front D/S, so I'll hold off on having one cut down.

The last thing to do is to fool the TCM. I haven't installed my 15 ohm resistors yet, and I do have a code for P0700, P0753, and P0743. I'm hoping the resistors will fix that.

CRUISE CONTROL WORKS!!

That's all for now. I'll see if I can't get some pics loaded.

Flickr apparently won't give you BBcode or even a URL for a direct link to JUST the image if you're using a mobile device. I had to pull out the laptop to get the BBcodes.

To the pictures:

The nasty input bearing retainer I got from Pull-A-Part. Poor guy didn't know how to charge it, so he just rang it up as "trim". A little over $8, so I wasn't complaining.

PXL_20210131_141905487 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

I got it all cleaned up and installed on the transmission:

PXL_20210131_214200497 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Manual pedal vs. Auto pedal assembly. The mount holes are all the same except for the 2 for where the clutch master cylinder bolts through the firewall.

PXL_20210201_141607569 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Chrysler was kind enough to dimple the firewall. The 3 dots in a row are where you drill. It's pretty self explanatory:

PXL_20210201_142007472 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

PXL_20210201_145020832 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

I separated the pedal assembly. To me, it made installation easier.

PXL_20210201_152959111 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Make sure the pilot bore is clean. I used some rust penetrant and scotchbrite on a drill. I didn't want anything in the 23 year old bore jamming my new pilot bushing from Novak.

PXL_20210201_200132566 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

My flywheel holding tool broke the last time I used it, and 105 ft-lbs is more than I could hold. I just used a piece of plastic coated chain to keep it from scratching the flywheel too much. Worked great!

PXL_20210201_205228514 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Sheet metal adapter piece pulled:

PXL_20210201_213901946 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Automatic vs. manual sheet metal adapter pieces. I guess you could use the automatic one if you really wanted to, but I had the manual one available, so I figured why not?

PXL_20210202_150300254 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Since the old foam piece was destroyed on both plates, I scraped it all off and used a small piece of leftover headliner material to make a foam gasket. I really hate getting cold or hot air in from outside, so I traced it out and cut it, then glued it on with some 3M spray adhesive. Just like you would use on a headliner.

PXL_20210202_154953993 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

PXL_20210202_155055687 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Here's the proof that the manual (top) crossmember is different. It's about 1/2" or 3/4" lower at the mount. I probably could have cut and welded it, but again... it was available to me, so why not?

PXL_20210202_182202414 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Here's the transmission making its way home:

PXL_20210202_185321212 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

I really should clean the carpet. I work at a Bridgestone tire factory, so my work boots get covered in black crap. But check out that clean OEM install!

PXL_20210202_205230497 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

And finally, these little ribs the screwdriver is pointing to were hitting the back of the transmission. You can see the tiny dimples on the transmission side, so I ground a little bit of the ribs away. I put a shop rag over the front of the transfer case to keep metal shavings away from the input seal, but I still hit it with a liberal coating of brake cleaner to blast away any residual shavings...

PXL_20210129_201707022 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

PXL_20210129_201715093 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

PXL_20210129_201718899 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Ground away:

PXL_20210129_202437112 by Terrence Brunson, on Flickr

Nice job.

Pics should be helpful to somebody.

I've got a '99 with a 5 speed swap done by the previous owner. It was kind of a hack job, but the a nice body, engine, AX15, and interior made me decide to go for it. It looks like they just took the NSS and manually engaged it into "N". The whole assembly is affixed off to the side of the engine bay.

When I bought this XJ it still had an auto ECU in it. Cruise worked, but shifting felt off. Engine RPM control seemed more erratic, and would drop very quickly between shifts. Swapping in a manual ECU fixed this, and made shifts feel the same as factory 5 speed XJs I've driven. Something about the manual ECU just seems to smooth RPMs out. As an added bonus (or not) your dummy shift lights will also magically start working, at least on later models.

I still have a ton of work to do on mine, just thought I would share my experiences regarding the ECU. Good post.