Once the truck was at my sisters place, I did a complete inspection of what was all there. 1988 Jeep Comanche Pioneer, long bed, 4.0 Renix engine. The truck was pretty much stock from end to end but the owners prior to my friend that sold it to me had attempted to swap the transmission to a 1970s Ford T18 transmission, a worthy substitute being a "granny gear" gearbox.  Doing some research, I found the swap was done using a bell housing from a Jeep CJ7 which bolts everything together but does not accommodate for the crank position sensor of the newer style jeep engines.

Aside from the powertrain that didn't run, the rest of the truck was in pretty good shape. the cab itself had no dents and the truck bed was what you would normally find on an old farm truck, with dents along the bed sides, tail gate and the rear underside of the bed sides were crushed upwards, but seemed liked an easy fix. 

the axles on the truck were what you would expect, Dana 30/35. the interior was all stock with normal 30-year-old wear and tear.  Unfortunately, I would have no time to work on the thing for two years and it being at my sister's place would turn into a storage situation. she was nice enough to take pizza and a big screen tv as payment for the entire time. She even acted as my used parts salesperson.

I wanted to find and engine that had a transmission and transfer case already, but I found a 2003 truck engine in phoenix for $1000 and decided to pick it up.  the engine came with all the stock brackets and intake, but I would soon realize that setup would not work for me.  I ordered a bracket system from ICT Billet which moved the alternator, steering pump and tensioner pully location, and eliminates the air conditioning condenser.

the engine bay was cleared and painted, and The Novak engine mounts that I bought fit just about perfect so, I used the engine hoist on a sheet of mdf to drop the engine in.  In case you are wondering, the ls mounts are slightly forward but not so much that the rear of the engine cant be lifted easily with a ratchet strap and so I supported the rear in this way. 

Pointing the engine in the way I felt it should be tilted based on pictures I had seen online, I noticed there would be a few problems with this set up.  For one, the rear portion of the right cylinder head was very close to the firewall, and two, the massive truck style intake manifold stuck at least 4' over where the hood would be.  this would just not do.  I researched and found that almost all intakes will fit gm engines within a wide range of years and that, with modification they can be mounted frontwards and backwards. So, this solves an issue now and solves an issue I would have to tackle later on.  I searched for the next two weeks for a car intake, specifically an ls 2 or ls 6 intake as the internet told me those have the most efficient air flow. I found another person in phoenix that sold me a ls6 intake with the injectors and fuel rail with it. This fit perfectly. the hood closed with an inch to spare above the intake facing forward and above the alternator and steering pump reservoir.  The rear of the engine's clearance issues was settled with a little persuasion from my hammer. Now with the engine fitted, it was time to look for the transmission and transfer case to fit, but while I was searching, I stumbled upon the front suspension that would be perfect for this build.

Novak Conversions sells an exhaust header kit that fits when performing and LS swap into a Jeep XJ. I found with research that they get the kit from Sanderson and that they are not specially made for Novak but rather a left and right unit is sent from two different kits. Knowing that I managed to find a knockoff of both of Sanderson's exhaust kits on Ebay for around $80 each and combined the two to replicate what Novak Conversions did, just for around $400 cheaper. I would recommend using Novak's Sanderson headers of course because they may fit a lot better. 

I had to massage the left side header a small amount to make clearance for the steering shaft and I had to order new hardware as they came with the wrong bolts. I was delighted to find out that I had saved money and could check this off my list of things to figure out, and I was proud of myself because I had figured out how to work the system.  Once you know what you are looking for, it is simple to find the correct parts to make this work. Simply go on the Sanderson website and match up the correct headers with the ones advertised on Novak Conversions.  I still recommend ordering from Novak though, it would take the pain in the rear factor out of fitting Ebay headers like I did.  

While the truck was still in mesa on a borrowed patch of my sisters giant 1.25 acre horse property, I had found and bought a matching pair of 1974 ford f100 axles, a dana 44 high pinion front and a ford 9 inch (big bearing) rear. I knew that not a lot of time would go by before I needed more space in the shop, so I decided to clear some of that space by putting the parts that were on the floor onto the Jeep. 

cleaning the axle of brackets was fairly easy as this particular ford 44 was of the design that had a solid tube from housing to knuckle on each end. I simply just used angle grinders and a flap disk to cut off the brackets and sand the tubes flat. 

I then ordered  a truss kit from Barnes4WD and set on a mission of getting the axle set up to replace the stock dana 30.

With the axle cleaned off, I installed a Barnes 4wd truss and bolted it back onto the truck.  My future plans would change but I knew I wanted RCV axle shafts, ball joint eliminators and an ARB locker.