OK guy's I havent been on the board for awhile and I'm ashamed. Because I was thinking of tricking out a grand cherokee. But now I've had a moment of clairification and I want to do a V6 swap in my kick. I'm leaning toward the 2.5 in the GV's but I don't have enough info. Can I use my t case and manual trans? Do I use the auto out of the GV with my t case?What years do I look for and I will want to make it legal due to smog crap here in Ca.


    Thanks in advance,
        Kevin

A) I can understand your recent moment of clarity... I just went through a similar experience only I was contemplating a non-Grand Cherokee.... I've recovered thankfully.

B) Can't help much with your questions but if you're going to do a swap then go for the 2.7 v6 out of an XL7 (or maybe the newer 06+ Grand Vitara?)

C) I visually compared the manual transmission in my GV with a friends manual trans in his tracker... they look different but that doesn't mean they won't mate up.

Do a search, there's a guy on here who has done the swap into his Track/Kick.  His name escapes me for the moment.

If I recall correctly the stock stuff won't bolt to the 2.5L...but that's probably a good thing.  It does make about twice the hp and torque of the 1.6L 8v's.

I am starting the same project. if you use the auto behind the 2.5 it will bolt to your stock tcase and you won't have to fuss with drivelines. Thats about as far as I got right now. the nice weather has been keeping me out of the garage

I have done some measuring and motor mounts look easy as does exhaust. for me the hardest part is going to be wiring! yuck!

Run the V6 with the GV/XL7 4 speed AISIN Warner tranny.  It's a sweet tranny, electric torque lock-up and a nice crawl with the converter.  The auto tranny accepts crawler gears.  I've extremely happy with it's performance in my GV, and would die to have either the GV or XLs drivetrain in my Sammy.

Only problem is it set up to run 4.88 gears in the GV, and 5.12 in the XL.  The tranny is exactly the same between the same two, and I imagine the reason the XL has 5.12s if for acceleration reasons.  The same may be for the GV, 4.88s instead of typical 4.62s for auto Kickers.

Go for it.

Beware as the manual tranny XL7's and GV's got 4.30 gears while the auto trans GV's got 4.88's and the XL7's got 5.12's.

I think they put the deeper gears in the auto XL7 so as to make up for the big arse.  Ours scoots along pretty nice so you basically forget it's several hundred pounds heavier than our GV was.

i'm putting a 01 gv. motor & auto tranny in the x90 with 6.15 gears. & 40" tires what do ya think? ...  cook the tranny .  how tuff are they?   stan

I'm looking to do a V6 swap as well.  I have a 2.8 MPI Cavalier engine I'm measuring up.  Sorry though no advice on the 2.5.