Well, things over the last few weeks haven't gone as smoothly as I hoped. When I bought the trans from a guy swapping his Cherokee over to 4WD, I didn't get the driveshaft from it. Not getting the original slip yoke proved to be a little time consuming to get the right one. Driveshaft shop couldn't find the right listing for a 2WD one. The Jeep recycle place had what was "supposed" to be the right one but when I got it home, it wasn't. I ened up taking the whole trans with me and found the 2WD one is unique from the 4WD versions. Finally got that and dropped the driveshaft off to be modified.
While that has happening, I finished up the new cross member. Got the driveshaft back after a few days and slipped it in. Cool, almost done... so I thought. Went to put the exhaust back on and found it didn't clear the trans mount I built. The drivers and passenger side exhaust routing was different enough that it didn't clear on the drivers side. Well, just to see if everything worked, I too a drive around the block with open headers.
I get home and parked it on it's own wheels since the conversion. Well crap! I built the cross member too low. It hung lower than the exhaust and I already rub it every once in a while. Combine that with the exhaust hitting, I need to redo this and rethink the e-brake system as there is no way it would clear the crossover pipe on the exhaust. Took me a little bit to figure out a good plan. Decided I would put the e-brake back onto the factory cross member, to the rear of the crossover pipe. Now I only need to figure out the trans mount and not need to plan to hang the e-brake system off it. I think I got this one right.
I also added a new Ram clutch/pressure plate and had the flywheel resurfaced. It uses GM spec parts so no need to have to figure out some Jeep/GM conversion.
Still don't have everything done and got sick so it's going to be a couple days before I finish things up. Here are the pics at this point.
Factory GM cast iron bellhousing mounted to the adapter
Getting ready to test fit
Someone before me had put a removable hump in but had a ragged cutout on the floor. I trimmed up things and made it much nicer
New Ram 11" clutch setup
New throwout bearing and factory arm
Cross member version 1, with e-brake system mounted
Cross member version 2, without e-brake system. Much cleaner and how I originally wanted to do it. Yes I bent the tubing with my tubing bender.
Well, just need to refit the exhaust and refill the trans with new fluid. Getting close.