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Topic ClosedAW-4 Conversion by Rick (SC397)

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poormansMACHINE View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: AW-4 Conversion by Rick (SC397)
    Posted: Dec/28/2009 at 3:25pm
Original author SC397

Yep, I have a 2WD AW4 bolted to a 304 in my 69 Javelin running flawlessly for 2 summers now. Probably 6000 miles in this car on top of the who knows how many miles when it was in the Jeep. I sent a PM with more detail but it is a bolt in operation more or less. I used a GM type trans mount and modified a stock K-member. I used the 4L flex plate and welded the 304 counter weight to it. I also used the 4L high torque starter. I had to fab a bracket for the TPS, and kick down cable. The drive shaft I used I think came out of a V8 hornet but I am not sure. I am not a electrical guy either. All I know how to do is make the smoke come out of the wires. Anyway, I did wire in the power/comfort switch etc. With some help, I had to wire in a relay to make the neutral saftey switch work correctly. The bottom line is, it works perfect. Down shifts, up shifts the whole nine yards. In my opinion, it is a great transmission and I wouldn't be afraid to put it behind a 360. On a early ('70) engine, you will have to use the Bulltear crank adapter.

 Mechanically, it all bolts together. I used the 4L flex plate and welded the counter weight to it. In your case, you need to take the weight off of a 360 flex plate and weld it in the same location on the 4L plate. Use the crank mounting holes as a reference point. With the 4L flex plate I also used the 4L starter. The other mechanical thing is that I made up a special bracket to house the TPS and kick down cables. I used the trans computer for the 4L and figured out where all of the wires go. The only real tricky part was wiring up the neutral saftey switch to work correctly. In my opinion if you can spin tires, a 360 won't hurt that transmission if you keep it cool enough. I am running a tranny cooler that is bolted where the licence plate goes in the front. Tell you what, the combo of the 304 AW4 3:54 in my Javelin is remarkable.
I used the floor shifter out of a Comanche Pick up but, I would think the B&M should work as well. I wired in the lock up converter and it works perfect.
The output yoke from the 2WD Jeep takes the exact same u-joint as the cars.
The transmission fits in the tunnel of my '69 javelin with no modification. I had to bend the dip stick tube a little to clear the engine.
Seriously, I put it in drive and floor it. It either spins tires or just digs and goes! The transmission starts to shift at 4500 and fully engages at 5000 rpm. I drive it like I used to drive my Jeeps with that transmission. Every time it goes out of the garage it gets flogged. (Just to make sure it works correctly, you know..)
For me, a 3.91:1 gear may be too steep. Mine is a 3:54 behind a 304 and runs 15.3 in the quarter. It churns about 2600 rpm at 70 mph. I was thinking of going down to a 3.31:1 gear so I can cruse with less rpm. My best gas mileage so far is like 28 MPG but, I really can't keep my foot out of it.


The bracket I fabricated to house the Throttle Position Sensor and the Kick Down Cable. I mounted it off of the 2 center intake manifold bolts. I am using a old Carter AFM carb and filed a hook on the linkage arm to mesh with the TPS. The key is to line the center of the pivots between the carb butterflies and the TPS arm.


I cut the chunk off as shown and knocked off the round steel shield from the tail shaft. I used a GM transmission mount and had to elongate the mounting holes a little. The transmission yoke from the Jeep accepts the same U-joint as the early AMC cars. I was checking the bell housing bolt pattern with a V8 spacer plate. I think that I had to enlarge one hole in the transmission bell from a smaller metric hole to accept the 3/8" bolt. It seems like I couldn't use one bolt hole due to the placement of the Jeep crank shaft posisition sensor cavity. The CPS is not needed because I was not using a engine control module.   


Excuse the dirty interior but, here is a shot of the Jeep shifter with the console that I modified to work. I installed a simple toggle switch to the left of the ignition switch for the Power/Comfort switch. I mounted the TCU to the heater box so you can't really see it but, you can get at it if you need to.


. The Jeep owner's manual says the shifter only has 3 forward positions - the first controls 1st and 2nd combined, the second controls 3rd (or drive), and the third controls the overdrive. Are you saying you can shift through all 4 gears now or are you still stuck with whatever rpm the 1-2 shift decides to come in at?"
I am saying that I don't remember now.... I THOUGHT, that I had shifted it through all of the gears manually but I will wait until the snow melts to try it again. Check out some of the Jeep forums, they have lots of things to say about the AW4. Check the Toyota web sites(A340,A350,A650E)and see what they say about them. There has GOT to be a guru out there on these transmissions that knows what takes to handle real power and, knows what to do to "tune" them.

"The bracket for the TPS looks simple enough but I'm not sure where the kick down "cable?" is located. I think I'll need a better explanaition of the carb area hookups eventually."
The bottom picture of the TPS showes it pretty well. It comes in below the throttle cable. I bent a 90 degree bend on the TPS bracket and made a square hole for the kick down cable to snap in to. The end of the cable connects to the carb linkage but you can't see that part. Basically, I convert the TPS and kick down cable from a fuel injected 4L to a carburated V8.

"It's a good thing nobody wanted the 4.0 intake setup I tried to sell a month ago - I'm pretty sure the TPS is probably still mounted on that. Not to mention the wiring for the trans "computer"."
Get all of that stuff you can including the engine wiring harness, Power/Comfort switch and, the brake switch and bracket that is located near the brake peddle.

. The Jeep owner's manual says the shifter only has 3 forward positions - the first controls 1st and 2nd combined, the second controls 3rd (or drive), and the third controls the overdrive. Are you saying you can shift through all 4 gears now or are you still stuck with whatever rpm the 1-2 shift decides to come in at?"
I am saying that I don't remember now.... I THOUGHT, that I had shifted it through all of the gears manually but I will wait until the snow melts to try it again. Check out some of the Jeep forums, they have lots of things to say about the AW4. Check the Toyota web sites(A340,A350,A650E)and see what they say about them. There has GOT to be a guru out there on these transmissions that knows what takes to handle real power and, knows what to do to "tune" them.

"The bracket for the TPS looks simple enough but I'm not sure where the kick down "cable?" is located. I think I'll need a better explanaition of the carb area hookups eventually."
The bottom picture of the TPS showes it pretty well. It comes in below the throttle cable. I bent a 90 degree bend on the TPS bracket and made a square hole for the kick down cable to snap in to. The end of the cable connects to the carb linkage but you can't see that part. Basically, I convert the TPS and kick down cable from a fuel injected 4L to a carburated V8.

"It's a good thing nobody wanted the 4.0 intake setup I tried to sell a month ago - I'm pretty sure the TPS is probably still mounted on that. Not to mention the wiring for the trans "computer"."
Get all of that stuff you can including the engine wiring harness, Power/Comfort switch and, the brake switch and bracket that is located near the brake pedal

.
OK... I will attempt to explain how I wired up the AW4 from a 1989 Jeep Comanche (2WD) to my '69 Javelin.

From TCU: Red wire. Ran to the + battery side of the solenoid (probably should have a fuse)
From TCU: Yellow wire. Ran to the "FAN-TRANS" terminal of the fuse block.
From TCU: Light blue/yellow tracer. This is for the lock-up torque converter. I wired in the brake switch from the Jeep so that it brakes the ground.
From TCU: Yellow/black tracer. Transmission Diagnostic Data Wire. I didn't wire this up to anything.
From TCU: Tan wire. This is for the Power/Comfort mode. I ran this to a toggle switch that is supplied with 12V. I think that applying 12V switches it to the Power Mode.
From TCU: Black wires with ground terminal. Ran to a ground on the fire wall.

From gear selector on the transmission:
Black/yellow tracer. Back up lights. I ran this wire to the "BACK UP TURN" terminal on the fuse block.
Brown/white tracer. Wired to the brown wire from the original shifter that runs to the back up lights.
Black/white tracer. Neutral Safety Switch. Needs to be wired to a relay for "reverse logic". Don't ask me how this works. I will include of the wiring sketch on my buddy made this work with a Relay from a Nissan.


This is how I had to wire the 4L starter to work with the stock Javelin solenoid.

THE DRIVE SHAFT LENGTH is 50 1/8" from CENTER TO CENTER of the U-JOINTS. This is with a V8, 2WD AW4, Jeep yoke and, the AMC20 rear end in a '69 Javelin. I think that the drive shaft that I used was from a V8 automatic Hornet/Cord but, I am not sure. I wouldn't want to go any shorter with the drive shaft so, if you found one in the range of 50.25 to 50.5 it should work fine. To determine the correct length for a drive shaft, push the transmission yoke in until it bottoms out then bring it out 1". Measure the center to center distance with the car loaded on the rear end. (at ride height).





Edited by poormansMACHINE - Dec/28/2009 at 3:27pm
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