The two-liter Pinto engine...
The two-liter Pinto engine made for a good swap. Note all the clearance available and the fact that the hood will close. Capable of sustaining high rpm, it could spin 5.38 gears at freeway speeds without a problem.
The ubiquitousT-90 transmission was really the weak link in the power chain, and those that were after a bit more power without sacrificing dependability picked the 2,000cc Pinto four-cylinder engine. Rated at 100 horsepower and 120lb-ft of torque, the motor was happy to rev to 6,000 rpm and didn't mind the high rpm highway speeds that the 5.38 gears produced.
Cooling was always an issue because you couldn't buy ready-built aluminum radiators from your mail-order suppliers. The stock radiators, being overbuilt from the factory, were marginal but sufficient to cool the smaller cubic-inch swaps but not up to the task of a 283 Chevy. For WWII in the Burma theater, some military trucks had some heavy-duty, four-core radiators. With some slight modifications they worked great in Jeeps. These were in high demand, but still you were working with a radiator that was now 20 years old and never meant for a V-8. Lots of time was spent in wrecking yards with a tape measure trying to determine what radiator would fit with the minimum amount of modifications. One usually ended up cutting part of the headlight cans to gain more radiator width which was done when using a Ford Galaxy radiator.
Another trick was to cut out the front crossmember and weld in an inverted "U" channel that set lower between the framerails and allowed a taller radiator to be used by putting the bottom of the radiator into the channel. I even knew a guy that mounted one radiator in the normal location and then a second one in the bed of his Jeep trying to keep his high-horsepower Chevy cool. Heavy-duty truck fans that pulled a lot of air (and were also quite noisy) had their blades trimmed for clearance, not always producing a good balance.
These engine swaps added weight to the front of the Jeeps, so the solution wasn't a custom-built set of leaf springs but to just add more spring leaves. Front driveshaft clearance was often a problem as it is now, and it wasn't uncommon to severely limit right-side front suspension travel to prevent the shaft from hitting the bellhousing or starter. Some of the adapters cocked the engine so that the right side was slightly higher for additional clearance in this area. We would also move the engine over so it was offset to the passenger side for clearance around the steering box. This made for some unusual driveshaft angles. Not only did you have a shaft that was on an up and down angle, but now not in line with the rear end. You could move the steering box to the outside of the frame, but that also meant moving the pedal assembly over.
Routing the exhaust was pretty simple on a Chevy swap with the ram-horn style cast iron exhaust manifolds, even though there was a pretty tight bend for the header pipe to clear the frame. On some engines, like the Buicks, you could obtain a right-side manifold and put it on the left side. Other swaps required custom-built headers. It seemed that the only place for mufflers was under the body just outside of the frame. Not the most practical as they got pretty bashed up here. Plus, they were right next to your ear. If you could get a muffler shop to spend some time and work with you, it was possible to snake a set of glass packs inside the framerails and out the rear.
As I mentioned earlier, the T-90 transmission did a great job for what Jeep intended. But as great as it was, it was not up to 350-cubic inch motors. The later T-86, T-14s, and T-15s weren't much better, so transmission swaps came into play. Naturally, we will go into that in a future issue.