Should I pull my transmission?

Here's the issue, on the way home from a camping trip in Tennessee my clutch pedal started getting soft and I was losing fluid. I topped off around Greensboro and got on home to Raleigh. The next morning I got in to go, and no pedal. This was two weeks ago now, and I've managed to replace the master and slave cylinders, had to rebuild the new master because the little seal in the front part had separated and wouldn't let fluid get back to the reservoir. After doing all this, I now can't get my clutch to fully disengage. I can't shift gears, but I can hear the clutch springs starting to engage as soon as I hit the pedal. Do you think that I may have bent springs fingers on the pressure plate? This clutch has sucked since I put it in two years ago. Lots of chatter and nearly impossible to have a smooth engagement. The old clutch with 220K worked better than the new one honestly. It's an Autozone Lifetime clutch set. I also had the flywheel turned when I did the installation. I'm also sure that it's not the bent clutch pedal issue, as I've already had that happen and I've fully welded it up about 80K miles ago and the welds are still look good. My XJ is a 1995 2dr Sport and currently has 310K on the odometer. I would like to put some more on it before Summer is over, plus I need my Jeep to go camping over the 4th. Please, give me a bit of advice. I'm going to grab a sandwich check back and see what the consensus is.

Also, has anyone else had problems with the tiny ears in the rear axle yoke breaking off and allowing the U-joint caps to separate resulting in vibes? I've been through two yokes now and just noticed that my current yoke has began to crack one ear and the U-joint was allowing about an 1/8" of play. The axle is a ChryCo 8.25" and I have a stock drive shaft.

1. FSM states "if the flywheel needs to be surfaced--REPLACE IT!". That isn't an exact quote, but that is what it says. Now, some have resurfaced their flywheels without problems, and others have had nothing but problems. Search, make up your own mind. Old Man had success after resurfacing his flywheel by using a larger bore Howe MC to get more travel to compensate.

2. Autozone. What can I say? LIFETIME parts that routinely need replacing. What can I say?

3. Luk Gold makes a good clutch kit, comes with a new slave. You won't get a lifetime warranty, they know clutches wear and aren't going to sell you some cheap POS parts they can afford to keep replacing as they WILL fail.

4. New MC and it failed? Let me guess--Autozone with lifetime warranty?

Hit the reset button, replace the flywheel, put in a good clutch kit, new (not reman) quality brand MC.

Well, I jerked the tranny, and half of the pressure plate fingers are bent. I guess that's the majority of the problem. Well, yeah that and the "Made in China" stamp on everything. I don't have time or money, mostly money, to purchase a decent clutch this time around so I'm just going to get a free one from Autozone. Luckily it only takes about an hour to pull an AX-15 so I can do this again when I need to with little downtime. Yeah, I usually don't get anything from the 'Zone anymore. I worked for them for a year in 1999 before I joined the Navy. The quality has definitely went down hill fast. I've been sourcing all my parts recently from RockAuto.com.

Oh, and any thoughts on the yoke?

I was wrong about the clutch. It was an AC Delco set purchased from Rockauto.com. So, I guess don't put GM parts in your Jeep.

I'm wondering if the fingers bent due to going over-center.

Any thing else looking bad in there?

Dumb question.....you did bleed the MC/Slave right?????

Yeah, I bled everything correctly finally. After looking at the pressure plate, I believe that the bad, new master cylinder broke the pressure plate. The master cylinder wasn't letting fluid go back into the reservoir from the slave. I kept installing and uninstalling the slave and master over the past two weeks trying to get it to do something. When I took the master cylinder apart this morning and saw the condition of the piston I realized that was what was causing the troubles. So, about 1/4 of the pressure plate fingers are bent pretty badly and is pretty much shot. I ordered the Luk clutch set, and it is supposed to be here by Friday. But I did take the opportunity to install a late model headliner and pull apart my dash to put some new lights in there as well.

The flywheel, clutch disc, and pressure plate friction surface all looked really good still. I'm planning on rebuilding the AX-15 in the coming year anyway so I'll just put some throw-away parts in for the time being. I'm going to pick up a 3rd rear end yoke from the yard tomorrow as well. I guess no ideas on that one.

That has happened to a lot of people. Make sure the caps are fully seated and not impacting the "ears" when you install into the yoke--some judicious use of a Dremel might not hurt.

Well, this is a follow up to the work. I've put around 800 miles on the XJ since the new clutch. Clutch pedal feels more like my Honda Civic instead of my dad's 81 International dumptruck which is nice. No more chatter at all, and the tranny shifts perfectly again. I guess I wasn't getting the clutch completely disengaged before either.

Replacing the rear axle input yoke cut down a lot on my vibes, but I still have a weird harmonic that sorta pulses through the Jeep at speeds over 55 mph. I'm going to get the tires balanced first, that fixed my death wobble issues a couple years ago and the tires haven't been balanced in two years. Then I'll start looking at other components.

Thanks for the help!

A harmonic vibration like that is too high in frequency to come from the tires. Look more closely at driveshaft condition, angle, etc.

check the front driveshaft cardan joint. It made a real wierd feeling at about 55 when mine had slop in the centering yoke and u joints. You can get the parts to rebuild the centering yoke, u joints are regular 1310s.
cost me about $50 to rebuild my front DS.