The Ram 1500 fitted with a 3.0 diesel V6 is very similar to the Jeep Grand Cherokee WK2 diesel engine. The cost of buying the replacement engine from Ram exceeds $70,000 AUD which has several owners looking at alternatives. One such alternative is to take the engine new or used from a WK2 Jeep Grand Cherokee and put it in a Ram.
Common questions we get ask are
Is the Ram 3.0 diesel engine the same as the WK2 Jeep Grand Cherokee?
Can I fit a Jeep Grand Cherokee engine into a Ram 1500 ?
Jeep Grand Cherokee diesel into a Ram 1500
It can be done but it requires some modifications. Here is the guide on how to do it.
Pull the motor. To do this you need to either lift the cab off the chassis or remove the sump from the motor. lifting the cab seems harder but trust me, it’s not. My advice is to lift the cab.
1- the ram oil cooler will bolt straight onto the Jeep block no dramas. You need to swap the cooler from the Ram. The cooler does look different but the mounting positions and gasket are identical.
If the old motor spun a big end YOU MUST REPLACE THE COOLER the metal in the cooler will contaminate a new engine.
2. Get rid of the ram idler bearing for the serpentine belt you don’t need it
3. Swap the Jeep drivers side bank timing cover over. (righthand drive vehicles) The timing cover top piece for mounting the high-pressure fuel pump is different. swap it over. (to swap it you need to remove the valve cover first )
4. Swap the PCV vent on the passenger side timing cover. no need to swap whole timing cover just the vent piece see image attached showing the Jeep one you need to discard and swap the ram one over.
5. you need to use a Jeep Grand Cherokee 2014-2018 serpentine belt. The Ram one will be too short. Dayco Part number you need is 6PK2100
6. Alternator mounting. This is the tricky part.
You will need an alternator mounting bracket off a WK2 2014-2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee diesel.
Then you will need to cut that bracket in half. Picture shows the piece you discard not the piece you keep.
You need to also mil or grind the bracket down about four mm (if you don’t the alternator hits the chasis rail on hard acceleration) in the pic I have pointed the blue biro on the bits you have to grind down. Don’t go to aggressive you can always cut more off but putting meat back on is a bit hard.
Then mount the modified half of a Jeep alternator bracket to the engine.
You then need to elongate the four mounting holes for the alternator off the ram. You will be using the Ram alternator.
The bottom two mounting holes holes line up with the Jeep alternator bracket with a bit of elongation
For the top two mounting holes- you don’t use the back one. For the frontmost hole you need to have a spacer (we used a Land Rover Discovery 4 under tray spacer and gound it down but anything will work, even a wheel nut.
everything else is the same.
