I was just told that a 5 speed cross member will drop the t-case 3/4" without losing any ground clearance? Can anyone confirm this?
I have one from my wreaked '99 4 banger ax-5, is it the same as a 4.0 ax-15 cross member?

 

I've read this as well. Any experts wanna elaborate?

 

i dont think the AW4 will bolt to the AX-15 cross member without some fab work....mainly because the AX is shorter.

 

Rumor (somewhat) Confirmed:

This is a picture of an '01 Manual Crossmember:

...and this is a picture of a factory '87 Manual crossmember:



Notice there is a "drop" in the '01 Manual one. I believe the one pictured as the '87 Manual Factory (with no dip) is also used for the AW4. Point being: There does exist a crossmember with a built in drop. The hole patters are identical.

Edit: There are 3 mounting holes for the crossmember, which result in 2 mounting locations. One (holes 1&2) is used for shorter trannies, and the other (2&3) is used for longer. At most, you may have to re-tap an unused set of nutserts that will already be in the unibody, but perhaps rusted all to hell.

 

Nice. I have to pull everything out off '99 any way. It won't hurt to try. I'll just lay them next to each other and check them out. Luckily, my 2000 is super clean from VA. Zero rust anywhere. I'll just run a tap through the hole, If it looks like it ill work.