From Old to LS Power: 6.0 Swap in My 1977 Jeep J20 (Part 1)

And here is the frame of a 1977 Jeep J20. Finally got my engine and transmission and transfer case back from being built. And tonight we're going to drop it in this frame. Let's get after it. All right, so first thing on the list of stuff to do is to throw the engine mount on. This is an aftermarket engine mount from BG Off-Road. Um it goes from the original frame horns of the V8, not the V6. If you have the V6 J truck, these won't work for you. If you have the V8, these will work for you. I'll link them down below. And then we have our transmission transfer case crossmember. So, let's go ahead. Let's bolt these into the frame before we get started. All right, so here's the first part of our LS swap conversion mount here. They just look like this. And then there's the other side with the plate. I'll show you guys in a bit. I don't know what I don't know what holes to use. I don't think it matters. I'm going to move it as far forward as I can. I think because the LS is a little bit smaller. I think it's smaller than the original engine. I need the backing on there. These uh these mounts are a little pricey. I think they're like 220 bucks or 250 bucks all said and done, but great quality mounts. I mean, BG always has great quality stuff. Really like I've never had a problem with them. Fast shipping, great customer service. I'm excited I'm excited to show you guys this this engine. I've been keeping it kind of a kind of a little secret for a while. I've I've had the engine for probably Oh, when did I go pick it up? December, maybe? And I haven't posted anywhere online yet. I'm excited for it. Um these are on. Now it's time to pull the engine out of the corner of the garage and get the flex plate bolted up. So, let's get it out. All right, I just got the LS mounts in. Time to show you guys the engine and transmission. There she is. 6.0 LS, about 450 500-ish horsepower. MP205 and TH400. Get the flex plate bolted on the back here. Get some Loctite on there, torque them to the right dimensions, the right pounds. And uh get this thing bolted up. All right. So, we got to throw this flex plate on. PRW Performance flex plate. And it tells you on there what side is the engine side. So, go ahead and line up these three holes with your three holes on your flex plate here. This is probably gross to most people, but get that in there. Go ahead and take your red Loctite. These are the same PRW Performance um flex plate bolts. Put a generous amount of red Loctite on there. Go ahead and thread that in there. You do not want these coming off. This will destroy absolutely everything in its path. I'm just hand tightening them right now, just to get them on there. Um but I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and torque them down to 74 foot-pounds. I'm going to do it I'm going to do it in three stages. So, the first set's going to be 15 40 and then 74. So, here I got my Quinn digital torque wrench adapter. I've been using these a lot. I like them. I'm going to set this to I'm going to set this to 15. All right, so the lowest I can go is 25. So, we're going to start at 25 and work our way up. All right, so I got the flex plate bolts on, torqued them down to 74 ft lbs. Now, I got to figure out how to get this transmission up and on there. I'm going to bolt this up, and then I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to bolt my engine mounts up to the side so I can get it in there. I can just slip the bolts right in here and be done. So, see how this goes. Here we got the TH400 bolted up to the 6.0. Now, when you're using the TH400, you're only going to have five bolts. This bolt right here is not going to go in. There's no hole here. And five bolts is more than enough. These are M10 by 1.5 by 50, I believe. Um they threaded right in there. Lock tight them. I'm going to go ahead and torque them down to 37 ft lbs right now, and then we'll go throw the engine mounts on the side there, and we'll be good to go. So, here's what our Here's what our plate looks like that gets mounted. It gets mounted with the same bolts as the bell housing did. It's all that metric cuz it's LS. So, I'm going to go ahead and mount these right on the side. Make sure you lock tight them before. Let it set up a little bit before you completely torque them down. But, I'm going to thread these in. My brackets go upwards like this when you put them on the engine. And they slide in like that. All right, so I had to go ahead and put a thread a tap in there. I just tapped it, cleaned it out. It was a little gunked up, probably from when they sprayed the block with paint. Probably some dried up paint on there or something, but seems to be going better now. I can actually get them threaded in there. So, I'm going to go ahead and take the impact and lightly run them up. Not too much. I don't want to All right, I got the transmission bolted to the engine. Transmission bolted to the engine. I got the engine mounts on. We're going to go ahead and we're going to try to drop it in the frame now. Let's get it dropped in there. Looks like I'm clearing pretty good on everything. Should sit roughly like that. Now, I just got to go ahead and lower this down slowly. See if I can get the Get this to line up. Pull it back a little tiny bit. I'm going to check my angle. Hopefully I can get this dropped in. Oh, Let's check. Get that side on there right now. Now, the cool thing about using this uh TH400 is this is actually what the truck came with. So, there should be no um changing of this rear thing at all. We'll figure it out as we go, but I don't think we should have to. That's one. Now, let's get the other side in. I'm going to go ahead and pull this bracket up, and then I'll come back when I get that bolted in. I'll show you guys. This is part one of getting the engine in the J20. I don't know how many parts this series is going to be. I'm just going to kind of upload this within my tool videos, but tonight I I we got a lot done. I'm extremely happy with how it's looking. So, um I'm going to learn how to film car stuff a little bit better cuz I feel like this video is going to be horrible, but anyways, this is part one. We got her in and we might have to move it back. Might be a little bit. I got to order some mounts and bushings, but uh next video, we're going to throw the transfer case on. So, hope you all have a great night and uh remember remember to get after it, eh?