1998 jeep xj 4.0 automatic 4x4.
Fired up my jeep to drive to work this morning and took off like normal. Got about a mile from home and went around a corner and heard a quiet pop and the engine revved and it barely kept moving. About 50 feet later the jeep would not move forward and when i stepped on the accelerator in drive, it only revved like it was in neutral. put it in reverse and it reversed fine so i used reverse to get it back home. got a ride to work and when i got home i started up the jeep, put it in drive, and it drove fine in all gears. did a little looking and most people report losing reverse and not forward gears so i could not find much. Any ideas what happened or could of happened?

 

Whether this will help or not I dont know. Im new to jeeps but this is my only guess. I had a 1985 dodge ramcharger that did almost the exact thing. I heard that the "kickdown cable" causes this. I messed with it and got the vehicle to go forward but slowly. I ended up putting a new transmission in it. Whether it needed it or not im not sure.

 

Any CEL? Fluid level? Fluid color? Fluid smell? Check all these and then get back to us. Something wrong with a auto transmissions fluid can really mess stuff up.

 

did you try shifting it manually from 1-2, then 3 then 4?

 

No CEL and the fluid isn't burnt and it has plenty of ATF. Ran through the gears when it happened and didn't have any forward gears. Got in it today and it drove fine. Drove it around for about half an hour and ran through all the gears, went up steep hills slowly and got up to 55 mph. Shifted fine. Talked to a transmission mechanic and he said it could be a number of things. He said it could of been one of two retaining clips or a rod inside the transmission. He said to pull the pan off and check for metal fragments in the fluid and see if I see anything broken which is what I planned to do this weekend anyways. Will update after doing such tomorrow.