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BA 10/5 really junk?

sebring84

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Littlestown, Pa
So kinda a noob question here. are the earlier 5 speed really that bad? My 87 xj has the BA 10/5 and so far with 207k miles no problems with it. Shifts fine and have all the gears. I really plan on wheeling it down the road so i am currently looking for a AX-15 swap. Will i make it through the winter with this thing or what?NAXJA
 
Yes it's junk.

Yes it may survive the winter, I had one that had 300,000 miles on it and only made a bit of noise in third and fifth.

Yes you should plan for an AX-15 swap either when it blows up or when you have a chance.

Do not sink money into a BA/10, if it needs a clutch or a mount go to an AX-15 or NV3550.
 
My experience has been that there are 2 things that can help the BA10/5 survive.

1) take relly good care of the clutch, make sure that it is fully disengaging. Since your 87 has an internal slave cylinder, one of the things that seems to help is using either Castrol LMA or Ghirling brake fluid in your clutch system. These two fluids seem to enable the internal slave cylinder to last the life of your clutch.

2) keep the tranny fluid fresh and use the best you can get. This tranny does not have brass/bronze synchros (they are aluminum in steel cups) it benefits from GL-5 gear oil. I have had good luck with both Amsoil and Redline. You probably don't want limited slip additives, so stay away from gear oils that say they're compatible with LSDs.

Another caution is that there are 3 plugs on the side for service, and there have been reports of people using the wrong plug as the fill plug and underfilling the tranny.

The failures I have seen appear to be related to insufficient lubrication of bearings causing the main shaft to develop play and wobble which then allows the synchro to "catch an edge" on the synchro cup and trash the sychro cage effectively taking out a pair of gears or the messing up the entire shifting process
 
it's not too bad if you don't abuse it, and keep oil in it, but it will eventually fail, and it you'll be better off with an ax15. lifting and wheeling count as abuse. in my comanche, i had over 400k on the ba/10, but it was stock, hadn't been abused, and i checked the oil just about every month or so. never once had an issue with it, and the guy i sold to still DD's it today. if you plan to wheel it or lift it with bigger tires, then i'd go ahead and look for an ax15 or nv3500
 
Right now i have a unknown 6" lift on 33's. 231 with sye and tom woods driveshaft. 3.07s open diffs and front posi locker. so i want to upgrade to the AX-15 and regear and lock the axles in the spring. I just was getting a little freaked out about having this pos tranny in the tunnel. thanks for the tips on keeping this thing alive.
 
Just my 2 cents but when I got my MJ I was all over it. Has a D44 LSD, solid as a rock...and then the bad news. It's also got a BA-10 and 3.07 gears. I have an AW4 waiting for me to get off my butt and swap it BUT...I've probably only put about 2k miles on it since I got it running and on the road.

Part of that process was cleaning out ALL the fluids and changing them out. Flushing out all the fluid lines with nice fresh stuff. The gunk that came out of the tranny was...well...gunk. It came out in big gloppy glops.

My tranny shifts like a dream, upshifts, downshifts. The truck is peppy, fast, responsive, 4x4 works great, all of the above. I think alot of the bad rap is that it needs regular maintenance, and they just don't get it.

Soooo, I'm working on interior and cosmetics now instead of swapping the AW4 because I'm having no probs with the BA-10. I know someday it'll likely blow up on me but until then I'm good with it.
 
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