Crunching the gears ...

[KD]

Hi,

We just have our Jeep TJ (2000) since two months now and the gears were fine at the beginning. After a short period of time we realized that the second gear wasn't easy to handle. Sometimes it made a strange noise, when getting into the second gear and sometimes it didn't work and there was this rattling sound like when you don't get into the gearwheel. After an hour of driving, or after getting into the second gear very very early (being in the first only for two seconds) it works better, but especially when it's so cold here like yesterday and today, all gears are very difficult to handle and especially the second one. The third one is starting to show the same symptoms. Do you have any idea what the reason could be? Apologize my bad Tech-English, I hope you can follow my description.

Any advice is highly appreciated!

[AV.NINE]

First things first. Hows the tranny fluid level/colour?

[dac]

do you mean it grinds when you go to change gears and it works better when it's warm?  It almost sounds like the synchro's may be pooched.  It probably doesn't grind when it's warm because the oil doesn't slow down the rotating parts as fast once you push the clutch in......  I'm assuming this is a manual trans.

If this is the problem the best way around it until you get it fixed is to learn by sound/tach when the best time to shift would be, double clutching also helps.  press clutch and take out of gear, let clutch go in neutral and then push clutch in again and slide it into gear.

[S-FLY]

Change it out for some red line tranny fluid.

[KD]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your advice. I really appreciate it. The tranny oil could really have something to do with it, as it would make sense with regards to the cold/warm differences. But as I'm not familiar with Jeep's (we just bought this one) I have no idea how to change or refill the tranny oil myself. Furthermore, I wonder if the parts are still OK or need to be changed. Is it easy to refill the tranny fluid myself? Do you think it would be wise to let a garage do this as I wanted to have an inspection at some point anyways? I also wonder about possible costs, especially if some parts are already slightly damaged. Is it going to be a big repair then, or should replacing/refilling the oil do? I really don't know much about Jeeps, so any advice in this matter is really appreciated. Thanks!

[AV.NINE]

On your tranny you have 2 plugs on the side. The top one is to fill and the bottom one is to drain. Stick a bucket underneath and pull your bottom plug, drain the fluid. Put it back in and pull the plug near the top of the tranny. Fill with fluid until its almost flush with the top plug but not so its pooring out. Put plug back in and your done.

[dubbleJs]

Yup, you'll probably need to get a little manual fluid pump to get it into the fill hole. I found mine at autovalue

[KD]

Thanks guys!!! 

I'm definitely going to try that out and let you know how it went.

 

[Vinman]

Word of advice,
If you're changing the fluid, remove the fill plug before draining the tranny fluid. If the fill plug is seized, It's a real b***h to get the fluid back in through drain hole. That goes for changing any fluids.
Depending on when your Jeep was built, it could have either the AX15 or the NV3550 tranny (assumping 4.0L engine) Jeep changed tranny's mid 2000 model year. The 3550 takes a different fluid than the AX.
I believe the 355o has the drain hole pointing straight down as I recall I had to drill a 2" hole in the bottom of the tranny shid plate for acccess.

Another easy thing to try is to remove the shift boot retaining ring and let the boot "flop".
On my 2000 TJ I found the boot really effects the way the tranny shifts when cold, particularly 2nd & 3rd gears, grind like crazy until warm.

Vince

[BlackYJ]

Becareful which plugs you remove on the tranny.  On both the AX-5 (4 banger) and the AX-15 (4.0L) there are plugs that say "DO NOT REMOVE".  On the AX-5 the drain and fill plugs are on the passenger side, and for the AX-15, the drain is at the front on the passenger side, and the fill is on the driver side.