Clayton Angel
New member
I have an '89 Jeep Cherokee Laredo 4.0 Straight 6 with 4-wheel drive and an auto tranny. I've owned it for over a year now and about 6 months ago started having a very strange problem with the transmission. I drove it from Washington to California and everything seemed to have been working fine. It seemed to have a bit of trouble with power on hills on the interstate, but made it there just fine. After a couple weeks in Cali the tranny, all of a sudden after 1 stop to the grocery store, seems to have stopped shifting on it's own. When I put it in drive, it would take off but SLOWWWW... It almost felt like it was stuck in a high gear. So I stopped, and shifted down to 1-2 and it took off just fine. When the RPM's hit 2,250 about, and sounded like the engine was about to over rev, I shifted it into 3. Which then lowered the RPM's and gave it power again. After about 35 MPH I can shift into Drive and there isn't much issue, but I swear it feels like it has no power and is just using the momentum it already has. It still drives like this today, I even drove it back to Washington like this. Tranny fluid is good, could use a new filter. Throttle positioner has been replaced a few times when trying to pass emissions, but could be bad again. I'm fairly car literate and have done all I could think of to fix the problem. I have a newer tranny in my garage that I'm just going to swap it with if the problem isn't an easy fix. Any insight or similar problems are welcome. I met a guy who has the same issue, but can't figure it out either... Let's get this one figured out. Thank you for reading =P