Hexaphobia

Hello all,

just bought my fist jeep. 2 door 1991 Laredo, 4.0L HO straight 6, 5 speed manual tyranny. This thing has been in and out of the shop for a month now for the same thing and i don't think the guys in the shop know hot to fix it. here is the story.

Bought the truck for a steal and figured there was something wrong with it but had the money to replace the engine or tyranny if need be because of how cheap i got it. When i test drove it I knew it needed new drive lines as they vibrated on highway. but otherwise it ran great and only had 140000 miles on it with brand new 35's. so I brought it home and scheduled a used vehicle inspection at a well respected local shop. before i could get it in however, it started to get hard to shift. Its fine at first but after 10-15 min of driving 1st gear becomes really hard to get into. and the clutch had to be all the way to the floor to shift and just like half an inch off the floor was all it took for the clutch to be back in. very touchy. So the day after the appointment I was driving it and about 10 min into the drive as always, 1st started to get hard to get into. and after about 20min, It got stuck at an intersection on a busy road.... It was stuck in neutral. couldn't get it into 1st gear at all, or any gear for that matter as i recall. If i turned the truck off i could get it into gear fine. so I turned the truck off, put it in 1st and started it in gear and was able to limp it off the road. Called AAA and had it towed to the shop.

The shop did there inspection and came back with:
Replace rear main seal:$500
Rebuild all drive lines and u joints:$1100
Entire clutch rebuild(including clutch,pressure plate, slave and master cylinders,resurface fly-wheel):$900
Fix the starter(was put in all sorts of wrong....)$30

I went ahead and authorized all the work. two weeks later, 2 days over how long they said it would take (drive lines took forever to get back from drive line shop) its still not done. they have finished all the work but the shop says "it still seams like the clutch fades out after driving for a while." and they dont know why. As in why I brought it in the first place.... So two days later they call me and tell me its done.

I go and pick it up and they tell me it was the rod that goes from the peddle to the cylinder. apparently it was a badly done home job and replacing it fixed the problem. And so for the next day or so, it drives fine, clutch feels great, peddle is no where near as touchy, goes into gear smoothly, All though I dont drive it further than 5 miles on those days. On the third day I drive it about 10 miles and it gets hard to get into 1st gear again. not as bad before but still creeps into first, but other than that, drives great.

Today however, My wife took the jeep to go see her mother after work... about 25 miles away. and wouldn't you know it? it gets hard to get into 1st... then it gets stuck in neutral again. She calls me and tells me she cant get it into any gear.

So its back on a AAA truck headed back to the shop...

Dose anyone have an idea as to what this could be? because the shop dose not. The guy i Keep talking to dose not get it saying "everything that could be causing this has been replaced, there is nothing old connected to the clutch to fail" The only thing he could think of is that the new slave cylinder is faulty. Could this be a tyranny problem? I asked the shop and he said most likely not.

I should clarify that before bringing it into the shop, when it got stuck the first time, the clutch felt ok, from what i could tell. it wasnt slipping or anything like that. and i asked how the clutch looked after they replaced it and they said that "the clutch didnt look to bad, a little warn, but the pressure plate was DONE." so did they sell me a clutch job i didnt need? also I noticed that the shift boot has been torn and is barley there. could it be the actual shifter?

Any leads would be much appreciated as I am about to start school and need a dependable vehicle.

Thank you for your time, Hex.

hbracing13

Sounds like someone doesn't know how to bleed the clutch. I had that same problem with my Cuz Jeep. What I did was remove the master fill it up and stand it up on the so the rod is facing down, then push the rod on the something hard while someone open the bleeder valve. Do this a couple of times and make use to check the master after each bleeding.
What happens is that air gets trapped as it goes over the booster. By standing it up your master is now the highest point so the air bubble goes to the top. This doesn't happen much since they probably use a mighty vac to bleed the clutch.