It’s still running strong. Everything works and I haven’t had any issues relating to the swap. Now that I’ve done it once it wouldn’t be a huge pain if I had a lift.

The half shafts "simply" pop out of the diff and carrier with a pry bar. I have done a few of these gmt360 trucks and they can be a huge pain in the butt to get them to pop out. I just pulled the upper ball joints off and it gave me just enough room to pop the half shafts out.

CH17653 is correct. There are 2 Orings in it. take both out and replace. I have seen that others say you can actually put 3 in.

Wonder how difficult it would be to remove the thermostat if the car was on a lift?

Yeah. If you have a lift it will be much simpler and easier than my experience lol but if not it’s fine. I just got the front end real high on jack stands. Make sure you choc the wheels if you do it this way. Pull the tcase first, I recommend using a transmission jack for that unless you’re a real good bench presser. I had my intake off which made the top bellhousing bolts much easier to reach. Yeah. As long as the tbss guys were AWD it should be the same. I just used a harbor freight transmission jack and rolled it under the front of the truck. Is not easy but in all reality it’s not that hard either, just a pain. Take your time and be safe. Be careful not to drop the caps off the front driveshaft u joint or you’ll have fun with needle bearings. I think that’s the just of it, hope it helps.

@@thediygearhead absolutely helped bro thanks so much it makes all what i’m doing validated cuz you have the same truck i hope you are having fun with your aero cuz it’s got to be the most legit factory sleeper ever produced.. people literally never know what tf it is let alone what it got packing and the fact that there were only like 600 produced i’ll probably never sell mines tbh

Probably did lol. I know I saw someone do it somewhere.

The car was sounding happy - it was running better. But the sound of the exhaust also makes me happy.

I’m not sure if you can just put the 2000 harness on the 97 motor or not. I swapped the entire drivetrain because I wanted the multimode tcase so I had to swap all thee 2000 wiring into my 98 body and it sucks. Includes all the hvac too

First figure out if it’s a series 1 or 2 engine. From there just search KT17 series 1/2. The QS just means quiet muffler and electric start if I recall. I get most Kohler kits on eBay or iSavetractors

The VIN stays with the body so no.

Great comment

Hehe, I didn’t really record how many hours it took but it was a LONG time. Obviously I didn’t have a lift so that made it take longer. It took me a solid two weeks straight working on it plus a few more days on and off. I will say a lot of that is because I kept the newer components off my donor frame which meant I had to swap all the electronics in the truck and hvac so if you just swap the frame itself it wouldn’t take near as long. I also don’t always work the fastest either and I really had no idea what I was doing, but that’s DIY so it’s all a learning curve at some point.

I believe the frames are the same from 96-02 but I’m pretty sure 4x4 is different from 2wd. Just the electronics are different so if you just swap the frame you won’t have my issues

96 has one less body mount but will technically work. 2wd and 4wd have the crossmembers in a different location but can be rewelded. At some point they switched the height of one of the body mounts but you can use the bushings from the other if you run into this so that will work too.

I was able to get at it with a set of 90 degree snap ring pliers

Yeah... I concur.