Redbeard where are you in Santa Cruz? I live in San Jose mostly, but I am always in Ben Lomond and SC on the weekends.

 

Check front axle u-joints for slop.

 

west side. near (about a mile from) the light house.

 

done. replaced them. they were in pretty good shape, they needed to be replaced, but they were not totally shot yet. still had grease, though it was a bit thick, the needle bearings all rolled and the action was smooth. none of the bearings were damaged, missing, worn or flat. they probably had another year of life in them...maybe...

i'm fairly certain it is the TC...

 

Did you check to see if your control arm bushings are good, both mount and arm side. If they are warn the axle may rotate and make noise.

What does your xj look like? My buddy lives off of seaside and I am always there, I may have seen you.

 

i drive an all White XJ with black bumpers and wheel flairs, and a very fine grey double grey pinstripe. i have a padded Yakima rack to haul my hang glider (sometimes i have a rack mounted to the front bumper too). i have a sticker in the rear window for a friends web site...ihangglide.com

 

well, i thought i would update everyone who may be interested...

since, for one of the few times in my life, i actually had more money than time, i took the Cherokee in to a highly recommended Trans shop.

after i made my first post, i developed some more issues, that further muddied the waters. the shift from 1st to 2nd gear became very difficult, and it would grind terribly going into reverse...but it turns out the problems were not related.

i dropped of the rig at the shop and paid them for a diagnosis (more extensive than the free one) they called later in the afternoon saying they really couldn't find too much wrong with the rig. they only discovered a bit of excessive backlash in the trans, but nothing terribly bad for a car with 145k mikes on it. i told them if they heard it they would know. i can down to the shop and took it for a spin...drove perfectly. figures.

i drove around a bit and FINALLY got about 4 klunks. his eyes opened up like saucers. he wanted to take it back to the shop and drop the trans oil. we found several chunks of metal where there should have been only oil with "glitter". several of the metal chunks were about the size of half a bb. i left the car at the shop for them to work on. with what we found in the trans fluid i conceded that the problem may be the trans and not the TC after all. the reasoning behind this thought was the ever increasing difficulty in shifting, and grinding going into reverse in conjunction with the metal we found in the trans fluid...

several days later i picked up the rig and drove away...rebuilt trans, and a new Lucas clutch. MAN is the clutch sweet! all the gears are nice and tight...not to mention the fact that all this work fixed a persistent minor trans oil leak that had been plaguing me that would be a pain to fix...there was a bearing that should have had about 15lbs of pressure on it that has 45 thou play!

i thought life was good until that night on my way home i got the same clunk. (insert expletives here). i called the next morning, and they said to bring it in right away. i took one of the owners out for a drive and was able to get it to clunk on command. he got out and watched as i drove to see what he could see...back to the shop.

He pulled out a really cool piece of equipment, put the car on the rack and attached an alligator clip to the rear diff, trans, TC, and front diff. all the wires ran up to the cab and into a box that he plugged headphones into. we went for a drive and he listened to each channel. sounded like the TC.

i mentioned again to him that it ground once going into four wheel drive and it had never done that...he went to that channel...i pulled the lever...the car sounded like it was in a friggin chipper. WOW! it did not stop! dropped it out of 4x4 and drove a block back to the shop.

since i told him i thought is was the TC originally he felt pretty bad. he gave me the TC at cost, and did the labor for free. i had the car back the following afternoon and it is bomber!!!

i have some minor work that needs to be done to our tahoe, so i will try to get the lowdown on exactly what the problem was with the TC later this week when i drop it off. i'll drop back in here to let everyone know so it will hopefully help someone else out.

despite not fixing the problem the first time i am very happy with the service i received. the transmission needed work anyway in the end...and i have a SWEET feeling new cluch. (there was about 50% left BTW) the old one had some very minor glazing in spots and would jump and learch a bit on occasion when cold.

the Jeep feels better than it did new now. he was a bit supprised that i did have some trouble in the trans that needed to be fixed and told me that those manuals are usually bomber and often outlast the car.

i'll post a bit more when i have a chance to talk to the owner/guy that did the work. (he was not available when i picked up the rig)

jeepfreak82, it sounds like you nailed it.

 

Hate that you went through so much trouble to find the source, but then again, it did make you look into the tranny and probably prevented you from being stranded there. That, along with the fact that you should be good to go for a while on a lot of the driveline now.