155,000 miles. Bought the jeep just a couple months ago to play with. Driving 70mph today and it starts slowing down and rpms go up. Limp off highway noticing smoke coming out back of jeep. Parked it and it idled fine. Shut down and noticed tranny fluid under bell housing (thus, the smoke from the fluid hitting the exhaust). Now it won't start.


In the past, every time I see tranny fluid coming out of a bell housing it's from the torque converter. Any thoughts?


Stock engine
Just put a 1" drop on tranny cross member last week.
Only has 30" tires, 3" lift.

 

Fluid coming from the bell housing doesn't typically mean torque converter with the AW4. They're fairly stout transmissions. The most common source of a transmission fluid leak in the bell housing of an AW4 is a failed input seal, and will also cause smoking on the exhaust pipe as you have described.

On the other hand, as you report problems with acceleration and maintaining speed, that would lead me to believe you could have a problem between the linkage of your engine and transmission, hence, you probably have fair enough reason to believe your torque converter has failed.

With it not starting, did any of the ATF manage to make its way to the distributor cap? I had that happen when my transmission cooler line failed, and it would not start until I dried everything up.