New guy here and I ran into a problem. I got a 98GC with a I6 and I am assuming a 42RE.
The other day the trans started to have a hard time going into gear when it was cold. Once warmed up it would run ok but seem to not want to shift into the other gears until it fully was warmed up. So other day wife was driving it and was running fine. She parked it, went into the store came out..No Reverse but will go into all other forward gears.

Now when I put it into R the trans goes into R as you can feel it try to move but, when you give it some gas to back up tis a no go.

So what gives??? Solenoids???

I sure am not like the idea of spending $1500 on a rebuild much less finding a good shop around me.

Any help would be a great comfort...
Thanks in Advance!!!

 

Well, you could drop the pan and see just how far out the adjustment on the low/reverse band is. you may get lucky and be able to adjust the low/reverse band and get some more use out of the trans.

 

Before dropping the pan, does everything else work ok? If it was a band issue, you would have no engine/compression breaking when in Man 1 position. If engine goes to idle speed or near idle when you let off the gas in Man 1, then you prob have a band/servo issue.

 

I have a 94 grand Cherokee limited. And have the same exact problem. When trans is cold, no going into reverse and sometime I've gotten lucky and reved it up while in reverse and it goes in real hard. But while driving around town, then back home or whatever I'll back it in when I have to and my reverse does just find. My fiancée works at Toyota and he was asking some of the guys that works in the shop that knows Jeeps, and he says it's just the reverse seal. My jeeps needs some serious trans work. So when the times comes to fix the reverse I'm just going to go ahead and rebuild the whole thing.