Adventioneering

Some will recall on the last Naches trip I swamped the Jeep and the transmission filled with water and silt. We got the Jeep out by filling it with some engine oil (all we had) after draining the water/mud/ATF and then got it home to Redmond on ATF Type-F (the wrong kind).

I was a little torn about what to do. You’ll read general information that tells you this totally destroys tansmissions, but a lot of people have been doing this to Jeeps because the transmissions aren’t vented from the factory through breather tubes (like say a Land Rover). Our TJ has a 32RH and by far I wasn’t the first to flood one. The anecdotal evidence on the Internet is you flush and filter and they are totally fine. One guy I ran across rebuilt his and later regretted it because the thing was pristine when he took it apart.

I figured it was worth trying a fluid change and a new filter and then seeing if I had problems down the line, at which point I could just do the weekend. It sounds like the 32RH is a mechanics dream; very simple and the overhaul procedure can be acomplished by a shadetree with reasonable tools in a weekend, including getting it in and out of the Jeep.

To flush the transmission I took a (correct) guess as to which side of the transmission cooler lines was the high-pressure side. If this is you, it’s the right-hand side looking at the front of the engine. With the hose disconnected I aimed it at a bucket and started the engine. You’ll note that the transmission won’t pump unless it’s in something other than park, for example, neutral.

The fluid came out like chocolate milkshake but after pouring seven or eight quarts through it, was coming out like normal fluid. I dropped the pan and changed the filter, wow! There was mud caked up on the bottom of the pan also but the transmission itself seemed pretty clean and neatly machined like it should be.

I put it back together and so far it’s taken about 5 quarts out of the 9 total, although it might need a little more. The Jeep is sounding horrible but I think it’s the A/C compressor clutch bearing – both the engine and transmission sound wonderful with the serpentine belt off! A test drive was perfectly fine, no slippage, weird noises, shifts when it should, crisply (even better than before I think) and the e-lock is working at highway speeds.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed for three or four thousand miles, and I’ll probably do the fluid and filter again after it’s run for awhile, but I think its going to be fine.

The filter seemed hard to find so I just bought it from the dealer for $15.26. It probably would have been more expensive to get one of the $7 sketchy filters off the Internet shipped in, and I would have had to wait.