Will a 231 out of a '97 TJ (unknown transmission) bolt into a '95 XJ with an AW4 and 231? I've heard different things about clocking positions, but nothing's been clear.

 

Its not clocking positions that causes the problem. You would need to know the type of tranny in the vehicle it came out of. The input shaft came in different lengths depending on the motor/tranny combo. This is true for all 231 cases. Now if you have a 231 that has just crapped out, you could always crack the case and swap your input into the TJ case if the one it came with didn't work.

 

gpXJ is exactly right, I tried to put a TJ case in my XJ with ax15 and the input gear on the tcase was not cut deep enough to fully seat on the transmission input shaft. I ended up having to sell it and buy one out of an XJ.

 

That's actually what I planned on doing since I'm going to be opening it to put an sye in anyways, I was just unsure about whether or not it actually was clocked differently. My transfer case has been rattling for a while now but I can't afford the downtime of taking mine out and rebuilding it not knowing what's salvageable so I've been looking for one to have ready.

 

When you do an SYE, you replace the output shaft. The input is the shaft that hooks to the tranny. Not the same thing. XJ with an auto tranny uses the mid length input shaft. I believe it is 0.81". The manual tranny I believe uses the long input which is somewhere around 1.21". You can find this info on Novak's site.

 

Oh I see. You meant you could swap inputs when you had it apart to do the sye. Yes that would work.