What’s wrong with this picture?
Answer: Absolutely nothing, for the first time since sometime in February. The Jeep is backed into its proper parking place.
Last winter something very bad happened in the valve body of the Jeep’s newly-rebuilt transmission. Park was some forward gear, locked of course by the parking pawl, and Reverse didn’t work at all. It happened overnight: One day it was fine, the next I started having to be very careful never to get myself into any situation requiring a reverse gear.
Then this morning, with exactly the same lack of any triggering event, it started working fine again. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
At first I assumed it was a linkage problem, because of course it would be. But it wasn’t: The linkage was just fine at all points. So it pretty much has to be a valve body problem, but why it would work perfectly fine for a year, suddenly gum up for several months, and then just as suddenly ungum, all overnight, is quite beyond my ability to speculate.
Meanwhile, Uncle Joel has continued his murderous ways.
In late spring I knew there was a mouse nest in Ian’s Cave. Never found it, of course, but I recently found how the mice were getting in and out and then I started getting kills in the (several) traps scattered around within. Now for two days straight I’ve gotten kills on juvenile mice, having apparently run out of adults. I’m winning the war, at last on that narrow front.
At the risk of ridicule, could the issue with the transmission be that the wrong transmission fluid was used when it was rebuilt?
Not the fluid, fly shit in the fluid.
In my experience with Chrysler products, it is usually electrical gremlins not hydraulics. Agree that if the rebuilder was a complete moron and did not clean out the pan and everything he touched during the rebiuld process, it could be grit jamming a valve or checkball, but usually electrics. Remove every connector related to the transmission, clean it with de-oxit then reassemble. Or pray and wait for it to fail again. 😉
Huh. And what I thought was wrong with the picture was the driver’s door swung all the way forward. But I don’t know Jeeps, maybe it doesn’t come with a strap to keep it from opening all the way around.
Just out of curiosity, is the valve body removable/ repairable/ replaceable without removing the transmission?
I was gonna say you dont have a strap on that driverside door.
I don’t have a strap on either door. The hooks that should connect the straps have long since broken.
And as for the valve body question: I don’t know. I could find out easily enough by just dropping the pan, but what would I do with the knowledge? There’s nobody around here capable of fixing it, including me.