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Rant

tbburg

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Scottsdale AZ
I can not believe that an actual trained engineer was in any way responsible for this.
I have removed a Peugeot BA 10-5 from an '87 cherokee. The jeep was given to me by a friend after acquiring it from a wrecker company. It "has a bad transmission". No kidding! It's French! What kind of engineering marvel were you expecting? They do FOOD. You want a cake? Pastries? Good wine and great cheese? Fine! You want engineering, head north. There's a whole nation of German engineers right across the border, and they can make good beer too. Freeking french transmission, what a joke,...

Back on topic: When started, the jeep makes a terrible racket. it sounds like someone is beating the trans. or engine as hard and fast as they can with a big hammer. I mean it was Loud! Try to imagine dropping a glass jar of 1/2" ball bearings into the fan with the motor running,... that kind of loud. My plan of action: throw the whole thing away and find a real trans. for it.

Rant #1(the prior 2 paragraphs are the set-up, not the rant): who was the rocket scientist that decided to attach the bell housing cover /block-off plate to the transmission with 2 big(Like 1/4") sheet metal screws!!? The bloody thing is attached IN FRONT of the flywheel. The flywheel has to be removed to get it off! It's part of the ENGINE ASSEMBLY. Why not bolt it to the engine? What the h**l! Why SCREW it to the trans. with anything other then the Engine/bell housing bolts.

Anyway, I had already determined that the sound was from the slave cylinder/throw-out bearing. Diagnosis was easy. The clutch hydraulic line and bleed line were loose in the bell housing. A good tug pulled them right out of the bell housing. Ends were broken off. The noise was apparently the lines or some other internal part banging around inside the bell housing and hitting the flywheel. A couple hours of work has the trans. out on the floor. Further inspection reveals the clutch lines probably broke because the single bolt(1 bolt, what the!... ) that holds the internal slave cylinder in place broke off or fell out, allowing the slave cylinder to rotate with the input shaft. Yet another source of banging noises: random bolt in bell housing hitting flywheel. (Note: hard to keep stationary lines attached to rotating part.)

Rant #2(actually, the main rant.) Further inspection of the transmission/bell housing sitting out on the floor revealed a rather startling and very upsetting fact. The bell housing attached to the BA 10-5 as installed in this jeep is set up for an external slave cylinder! It was MODIFIED to accept that d**d, internal, annular slave cylinder/throw-out bearing piece of c**p. The bell housing has a threaded hole where the clutch fork pivot would screw in. The hole in the side of the bell where the hydraulic lines emerge is the perfect shape to accept an external slave cylinder. The holes are drilled and threaded where the mounting studs/bolts would screw in. All the machine work was already done, and I'll bet there is a stock clutch fork, throw-out bearing, and slave cylinder somewhere in a Peugeot catalog that will drop right in there. Some IDIOT, probably working for AMC, which would most likely make him/her/IT an American idiot, thought was a good idea to add an internal slave cylinder! What was the "BRILLIANT IDEA" here? To somehow make the trans even worse? The Idea that the Engine/trans could be assembled at the factory, with no idea weather the clutch lines were properly assembled and no way to test/repair it short of breaking the whole assembly apart if it was wrong or leaks? The idea that an $900.00 slave cylinder replacement job that the dealership would still loose money on?

Anybody else need to vent? Feel free. Just please don't bother giving advice on how to fix this. As mentioned, my solution to this is a different transmission.
On a positive note: If anyone in the Phoenix area has an '87XJ with a bad trans, and you think another Peugeot trans will hold up any better then the one you just toasted, I have one that probably is OK internally. It will need a new slave cylinder.
 
I'm Sorry, but this is the Tech section of the Forum.

You obviously wanted the snotty nosed, whinny assed, pot smoking Rant Forum.

Just a second, I'll connect you...
 
I hate to tell you this, but all the jeep transmissions have the plate bolted to the trans like that....you can leave them out if you want to. You should see what kind of crap those engineers have dreamed up in the last 20 years....Like the exhaust on the JK wranglers.
 
Yah - but you can unscrew two largish screws and detach that plate from the bellhousing without removing the flywheel.

No, I don't want a Peugeot - I've been through four of them. I can even tell you why they fail - I figured it out during my Materials & Processes class (we all had to do a report on something - take it apart, figure out how it was made and what it was made from, and figure out what could be done better with the accountants...) I happened to have one that I was tearing down for scrap anyhow - so I did my report on it. Got an "A", too!

There's a thread floating around here on replacing that damned Peugeot with an AX-15, lots of information, pitfalls you might encounter, and the like. Take the transfer case with the transmission, and it's a direct swap.

"Let this be THE Peugeot to AX-15 swap thread", I think.
 
Zuki-Ron said:
I'm Sorry, but this is the Tech section of the Forum.

You obviously wanted the snotty nosed, whinny assed, pot smoking Rant Forum.

Just a second, I'll connect you...

That there is funny......................
 
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