Well i got it figured out in the end.
I'm not sure if i ever found that jeep place in Lehi, but i did find a place that had excellent prices on used wranglers (vs what i found on ksl).
It seems that right around Christmas is the perfect time to source jeep parts and take off parts on ksl!
The 3.8 in the jeep was nearly 100% compatible with the 3.8 in the minivans, making life somewhat easy.
Coming from building the LS2 in my tahoe, part availability was not pleasant.
I will say that i love the simplicity of that 3.8 vs the 3.6, the 3.8 is just a nice simple pushrod engine.
I have so little into this thing where it has me thinking about flipping it.
But I'm probably going to build it, that is as long as i survive the layoffs...