Cold weather: hurting me and helping me. . .

OK, I have two separate issues to throw out there for all of you Jeep gurus.

First, I noticed that while my Jeep cranks and cranks forever before it finally starts when it's warm out, it only needs two or three revolutions before it starts! I don't understand this effect, but I like it.

Now for the second, more frustrating issue. Since it's gotten cold around Philadelphia (and perhaps the cold is an unrelated factor?) I have had problems shifting into gear. When I bought this '92 5-speed in the early summer, it shifted with absolutely no problems, and continued to do so until very recently. The really odd thing is that it is a bit hard to get in into the various stick postions when I start to drive it, but AS IT WARMS UP, it becomes a serious chore to get into gear. However, it typically DOES NOT grind when I'm forcing it into position. Sometimes it will grind reverse a bit, but not the other gears. When the vehicle has cooled, and I go to drive home, it starts out shifting hard, and then gets harder and harder. So I've only noticed this problem since it got cold out, but it gets WORSE as the vehicle warms up. There is a good deal of free play in the clutch, but I would think that would cause it to grind, like when messing up a shift and dropping the clutch before you're fully in gear.

Any ideas greatly welcome! I need this vehicle to get me to work, to get me home, and to drive me into the mountains of central PA whenever I have free time!

the shifting problem is in the clutch system and the more you drive like that the more its gona tear up your tranny. the starting issue is fairly common to jeeps

dzraces--

What do you make of the temperature dependence of the issue--shifts relatively easy when I start it, but then becomes progressively harder? And what about the lack of grind? Can you provide more details, like what aspect of the clutch system is giving me the problem?

the temp dependancy sounds ike bearing/bushing issues internally.

the clutch has basicly 2 hydrolic parts both were poorly desighned replace them both. the slave is internal of the bell housing so pull your tranny and have it inspected at a shop before you re install it since your having problems already. I made the mistake of replacing a clutch once and the next day the tranny shot 3rd gear out the side of the casing.

I had very similar symtoms with one of my previous Jeeps..

It was hard to go into gear and got worst when it warmed up.. After replacing the hydrolic throw-out bearing and clutch and it did the same thing, I took it to a shop. It turns out the syncro gears were shot... I think it cost around $1200, but about $350 of that was labor just to drop the tranny.. It shifted great after that...

Elias
Pronounced Eh-lee-us
Or Just call me "E"


Whatever......

In case anyone's interested, here's how this story played out. It's not really done yet, but it's gotten interesting enough to share.

First, I had to limp it home. I got it into second gear, and in the dark of night with little traffic to compete with, I drove all the way home. It hesitated a little from a stop until it warmed up, but I only stalled twice with numerous stops being made over maybe five miles, and that while the engine was still pretty cool.

Here was my thought process: A week prior to my post, the clutch was operating properly and the gears all meshed very smoothly between shifts. Because of this, I assumed that the synchros were probably fine. I would expect a gradual transition between shifting smoothly and being hardly able to get the gears to mesh at all. Then I considered the clutch itself. If it was worn, it would probably be slipping, not grabbing right off the floor and holding tight.

So that brought me back to the hydraulic system, implicated in the first reponse. I looked over some other threads here and found a case where the owner was suffering almost the exact same symptoms as I was. He took it to a garage and paid them about $240 to switch out the master cylinder, which fixed the problem. He also stated that as the vehicle warmed up, it became much harder to shift. This sold me, as it was exactly what I experienced. I don't really have the facilities to pull the tranny to get at the slave cylinder, so I figured that I'd replace the master cylinder and flush the fluid. The fluid, rather than that cool pale blue color of the fresh DOT 3 fluid I subsequently put in, was brown and really really nasty looking.

I didn;t really have that much money to throw around on this right now, so I went out and got a master cylinder at the second Pep Boys I visited that evening, and brought my score home. This was last night.

Today I got out of work at noon. Done for the year! I had plans to replace the cylinder and then to drive to Manhattan to meet some friends. So I bust my a$$ for an hour and a half getting the cylinder put in. The hydraulic line is held into the housing of the master cylinder with a roll pin. I had to drill the old one out for expedience, but the replacement came with a new one so it was a nonissue.

After the installation, I needed to undo the bleed valve that protrudes from the transmission case to bleed the system and flush out the ultra nasty old fluid. It looked to probably have never been replaced in the 14 or so years of the vehicle's life. I had some troubles getting the bleed valve open, as it is not fixed rigidly in place like a brake caliper bleeder, but instead can move in and out of the case housing to an extent. Also, I could feel it trying to twist as I tried undo the tiny bleed fitting with a box wrench. But the bleeder was attached to a housing that had a wrenchable surface, so I was able to hit it with PB Blaster and then use the two wrench points to get it open. Bleeding it with a hand held vacuum pump was next, which was a little tricky because I had to keep getting out from under the Jeep to make sure I didn't start sucking air from the reservoir.

OK, done. I got in my trusty XJ, turned it on, and shifted triumphantly into first gear to pull further into the driveway. FIXED!!!
:cheers:

Oh, but here's the rest of he story. . .

So I gather my stuff to get ready to go to meet up with my friends in Jersey, load all my stuff up. . . Then I open the driver's side door to get in and see just a couple of drops of wetness on the floor mat. I investigate. It's coming from the boot on the new master cylinder. There's a little hole in it, and every time I work the pedal, it leaks a couple of drops out. The last one didn't even have a boot, and it never leaked, so basically, all of my hard work has been defeated by this crappy Taiwanese Pep Boys part. No trip to NYC. So what the heck--I guess I'll just share my experience and hope it makes me feel better.

But, really, the thing that is most important here is that I asked a question, got a few answers, then investigated the one that I thought made the most sense. I spent uder fifty dollars for the part and the fluid put together, as opposed to the almost $240 the other guy spent to have someone do it for him, and I know that I can do it again tomorrow, and hopefully without having to then do it again before I get a part that isn't defective. Thanks for the ideas, dzraces and EliasJ123. Much appreciated.

--waving pine

Here's an update on my clutch issue. The master cylinder was only a temporary fix. Over time, the free play in the clutch pedal returned, leaving me wih having to repetitively bleed the system to get a few additional days worth of driving at a time. I wasn't losing any fluid anywhere--it was always full when I opened the master up to bleed it again. I assumed that Gerr was correct and I needed to replace the slave/throwout bearing as well. Over the last few weeks, I had my XJ at a friend's place where I could leave it for a while, and each of the three past weekends I went and worked on it.

The first weekend I got the exhaust off, and partied a little too much so that was about it.

The next weekend I got the console off in the passenger compartment, removed the drive shafts, and most of the bolts connecting the engine to the clutch housing. I zip tied the starter to the frame to avoid damaging the wires since I didn't want to disconnect them. I couldn't figure out how to get the star head bolts off the top of the housing since there was not enough clearance to even get the socket on. I also couldn't figure out how to get the "quick disconnect" that hooks the hydraulic line to the slave cylinder to come apart.

This past weekend I removed the shift lever and then still stumped on the quick disconnect and the star head bolt problem, I talked to a guy at a Pep Boys garage who told me two valuable things. First, he said that I had to lower the transmission to get access to the star head bolts. He was right about that. Now I had read a post somewhere on another post here that said that the bolts are an E13 inverse torx head. Someone had responded and said that he couldn't find an E13 anywhere. I looked at every hardware store and parts store I knew of and found many E10, E12, and E14 sockets, but no E13 anywhere. HOWEVER, I found that the size was actually an E12 on my 1992 XJ, which I already had, so that was quite a relief. I figured that I could have gotten the bolts out somehow, but was happy that they were only minimally disfigured so I could use them again when I put everything back together. The second valuable piece of information the mechanic gave me was that to get the quick dosconnect apart, I had to push the plastic ring towards the connector, and then they would pull apart. Since the part may well have been there for 15 years, pushing the ring required going around the circumference with pump pliers, pushing a little bit at a time, and then I needed to pull the two pieces apart with pliers, but they came apart undamaged, so I didn't need to buy a new hydraulic line. I used a motorcylce jack to drop the transmission since with the transfer case attached it's bulky and unwieldy. Once the tranny was pulled, replacing the slave was child's play.

So I put everything back together. . . and there was a cm or less of free play on the clutch, and despite it being really loud ( I hadn't put the exhaust back on before I tested it) it shifted like a dream. So my friend lives an hour from me, and at my place I have a wreck '94 XJ with an auto transmission and a perfectly good exhaust system. I had to cut the tail pipe off in order to get the exhaust off, so I was just going to drive it home, and then take the tail pipe from the other Jeep. I zip tied the O2 sensor to the anti-sway bar and set off for home. I figured the engine would run rich, but didn't think it would be a problem. A little bit down the road, I remembered that I had left my drill at my friend's house, so I turned back, got my drill, and then headed back down his half mile driveway. Near the bottom, the engine began to run really roughly, and then it shuddered and died. I've never had any problems with the engine in the year I drove it, so I am assuming that the problem is realted to the engine running with an O2 sensor that is only sensing an unchanging concentration of O2 since it's just hanging in the fresh air. I wondered if the engine was flooded because the computer kept trying to put more and more fuel in the cylinders to compensate for what it saw as a fuel supply or non-combustion problem.

So I was stuck in the driveway, and decided that putting the exhaust back on might be the best thing I could do for my Jeep. It began to pour rain, but I got it back on while lying in a river of runoff with the help of my girlfriend and another friend who was with us. So I tried to start it again with the exhaust back on, and the sensor in place; it would only turn over but not start.

:dunno:

So here's my plan of action: next time I'm up there (3 weeks from now, unfortunately) I'm going to remove the battery terminal to clear any potential history from the computer (I don't know what kind of info it stores and how that might affect its interpretation of how to manage the engine given the O2 data it tried to run on before it died), then remove the spark plugs and turn the engine over by hand turning the crankshaft with a wrench to see if liquid fuel is visible as the pistons come towards their uppermost position. If so, I'll siphon it out and if not, I'll reconnect everything and try to make it start again.

So my current question is: does anyone have a different interpretation of what happeneded here and how to fix the problem? Everthing worked before except the clutch, which I have now fixed with the installation of the slave cylinder, but then ran it without the O2 sensor in the exhaust stream, and then it died within several miles of driving, never to start again in the hour or two after that. Since nothing else changed, I tend to think it was related to the sensor, but I'm very open to other ideas.

Thanks!

--waving pine

just a couple things to think about for the next 3 weeks--

brake fluid/clutch fluid into the fuse box?
pinched fuel line during trans. removal?
crank sensor wires slightly pulled apart resulting in high resistance?
fuel pump harness damaged during trans removal?

keep searching, and it'll still be there when you return:looney:
--Shorty