Since many people casually talk about inspecting the flex plate bolts, I thought it would be cake to remove the flex plate access cover on my 2000 XJ. Turns out that it appears to be a PITA. Removal of one of the cover plate bolts is blocked by the exhaust down-pipe. I would either have to remove the down-pipe or dent the hell out of it.

As it turns out, I was able to move the flex plate access cover out far enough to get a box-end wrench on the flex plate bolts, and I found that all the bolts were still plenty tight. So all was kind of ok because I accomplished my mission of dispositioning the flex plate bolts, but it would have been more of a PITA if any bolts were loose.

My main interest in this post is to ask what other people with late model XJs have done to check and tighten their flex plate bolts. Did they have the same issue as me, or did they find a way to remove the cover plate without denting the down-pipe or removing it?

When I did mine, from memory (I may go look again to see), but I just loosened that one enough and did have to mess around with the plate, I seem to remember taking pliers and bending the plate a little at one edge to get over the bolt and then it came out. Putting it back was kind of a pain also, had to "pop" it in over the bolt. No damage to the exhaust.

If youre talking about the big bolts at the bottom, the cover should be notched on the one side to allow for removal without taking the drivers side bolt all the way out. I put mine in the other direction after a tranny swap.

Yeah, I saw that slots on the driver-side of the inspection cover, but I couldn't get the plate to slide free. It would hit the torque converter before it had cleared the big bolt and the transmission case. Not sure what I was doing wrong. Next time I need to get in there, I'm going to use a cut-off saw to remove the big bolt and then replace it with smaller diameter bolt and some washers.