So I have finally finished. Old engine is out, new engine is in. It’s a 2000 jeep and I put an engine in from a 97.

It will crank but not start. It occasionally sounds like one cylinder fires but it’s not close to running. All the threads online are crank no start problems that spontaneously showed up. My issue is that something obviously went wrong with the swap.

I am pretty sure everything is plugged in. I am getting fuel at the fuel rail. I cranked it long enough to get oil pressure (have a battery charger on it so it’s not low voltage. Also all the grounds were cleaned up) I do wonder if I set up the camshaft position sensor correctly. I followed some YouTube’s but that is my suspicion.

Any thoughts would be appreciated specifically if there is something related to the 97 in a 00. But the engines were almost identical except for the distributor to coil pack conversion.

thanks.

Did you swap the flexplate? Could also be the CPS is wrong. Find TDC on the motor and reset it.

The new old engine came out of a manual and mine is an auto so I didn’t change the flex plate.

But it did the CPS wrong am I gonna have to pull the engine again to set it up right. I am Ain’t I. 😵‍💫

By cps do you mean crank or cam, neither one needs the engine pulled, and the crank position should be mostly idiot resistant once you can get to it.

Good news!

I came home today and was thinking about how I did the cam shaft positioning sensor. I remember the guy on the tutorial saying it needs to point to the firewall. So after I followed his instructions I turned it a bit more to be square with the firewall. So I turned it counter clockwise about 15 degrees. Tried the ignition and it came to life in about half a second of cranking.

So my question now is should I find TDC again and redo the CPS or if it’s running fine is it ok?

Thanks for the input.

In having similar issues . Jeep ran..broke front diff parked it..voltage regulator external fried sensors..replaced crank and cam sensor..can sensor AutoZone is entire distributor..the only way I can get it to start and run besides way out of wach stupid retarded timing revs clean but rev limiter low like 4000rpm..rotor not pointing where it should be..in also a mechanic..no codes..it runs 2 teeth away from where it should? Could cam phaser or distributor gear be installed wrong? I can make it run..but the Chilton's installation puts it 69 degrees after top dead center and to make it run is 69 degrees before tdc..it's almost swapping cylinders and setting distributor anything tdc base marked cap ugh..in at the point distributor new something wrong..2 teeth retarded it runs..until revving timing so far back it hits previous plug.. Chilton's installation puts.rotor.bug past 1 out towards 5..to make it run the rotor bug is closer to 4 seriously on the cap..I've on ans off trouble.shot..im at a loss and cant tuming light advance retard..say 20° before top dead center..where spark would be from 10-30° before..I can't make rotor bug get there at all..tonight 3 plus hours cam phaser 3/16 dowel pin in proper hole rotor bug past tdc..in at a serious loss of brain power..above i had to replace computer..it all ran good until over voltage fried sensors..back story broke friont ring and pinion after the over voltage..sat..no start got time finally for my own project again..rebuilt front axle entirely..put crankshaft sensor in per codes..next distributor crank/cam code..got running..but cranked back like timing was off..I've spent on ans off time a few months pulling distributor tonight..I've tried it all..Chilton's installation the rotor bug at tdc is past the #1 cap point..it kicks back all but 2 gears back..starts fime there..but retarding timing it putd it in rev limiter before tje rev limiter? 4000rpm not rec limiter..is there a way to other than like race car drilling cap figure out what I think is going on? The cam phaser locked out it's after tdc..my issues are like the post..except I can make it run 2 gear notches back that puts rotor bug way out of phase??

Well, I ended up replacing the cam shaft position sensor, and the coolant temp sensor. This made an improvement but it would still run really rough after a few mins.
My xj will start to use sensor data after 4 mins and when the water is warmed up. This is when it would start to run bad. I also replaced the oxygen sensor and now it’s running good.
I don’t think you can adjust the timing. The computer does all that so my understanding is that turning the distributed has no real effect.

a couple of suggestions

instruct Chat GPT to re-write your post with correct grammar, punctuation and sentence structure ..its too hard to read

I see the word Chiltons..I believe this manual may have wrong info on timing, check the archives on that one

free download the FSM search using Google or on here

No trouble reading it, understanding is another matter - but I thought that was me.

So did chat GPT do a good job?

The big jump will be when “mechanic GPT” can just fix it for me.

PS: I did get my keep running. I replaced too many things at the same time to know exactly what it was for me but I did re-indexed a new cam position sensor, replaced the coolant temp sensor, fixed a moderate vac leak, and replaced an upstream O2 sensor and now it’s running well.