Just because you already have an engine or tranny sitting in your yard doesn’t mean that it will make a good candidate for a swap into your Jeep. In most cases, these loose and often oddball parts will end up costing you more money to put in than starting over with something more common. Now that’s not to say that we don’t like cool and original swaps, but you should probably leave these to rich eccentric ’wheelers who don’t care about cost, and will pay anything to mate a Quadratrac to a Powerglide and an International 345.
When performing swaps, it’s a good idea to use common sense— that’s the part of your brain you’re not using when you’re comparing Jeeps with your buddies or when you’re trying to win a drinking contest. If you’re swapping an engine, it’s often a good idea to use a transmission that is commonly found behind it. In an ideal world you could swap the entire drivetrain (engine, tranny, and transfer case) into your Jeep, but limited space and different axle and undercarriage configurations often prohibit this simple swap method. So the use of adapters from companies like Advance Adapters and Novak make more swaps possible. Here’s some info on what we think makes a good swap.