joelukex4 wrote:
Will 3.55 fit in the liberty. It would lower the rpm's and hopefully increase mileage.
The rear would be an doable swap, but the front will require some work to get a pinion that will fit the front housing. I think it is shorter requiring the shaft to be annealed or tempering to "half hard" with out softening the pinion gear, re-maching the length, splines, and such to match up, rehardening and tempering the machined area. You will have a gem, but unless you have the heat treating equipment a lathe, milling machine with DRO, index head, spline cutters, and lots of time, you will go broke. If you work for a CNC machine shop that has the heat treating equipment, you could mod 3.54 pinions to fit the front and sell them. Sir Sam or TJKJ2002 might know what would work for your donor gears to redo.
You could find a bolt on overdrive, but you would be doing a lot of drive shaft rework and redoing mounts, cross members, etc. I did that on a '73 Chevy I had a Perkins Turbo Diesel in years ago and traded off on my CRD.
If you have to drive a lot of rural back roads one option is using an '03 RAM 1500 5.7L /545RFE TCM and follow the training procedure.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=70718It drops the RPMs a lot for better fuel economy and a lot cheaper than swapping out gears.
I have the machine tools, but with my road warrior job and lots of Hunny Do at home, doing the 3.73 to 3.55 swap is not an option in my lifetime.