Posted by Gordon Maney on Thursday, November 21, 2002 at 8:50PM :
Some time ago I entered a post on the TDR board regarding a problem that my 2001 2500, 6-speed truck was having. Since shortly after new, intermittently it did not want to go into gear. The synchronizers had to stop the motion in order to get it into gear, and sometimes it was a real problem. All in the same 20 minute drive it might do it, but mostly not do it. I knew for quite a while that it did it infrequently enough that I could not count on the truck displaying this problem when I took it to my dealer.
It got bad enough, did it often enough, that I took it to the dealer. It did not want to do it while there (what a surprise), but they did spend considerable time with it, and also changed the trans lube. I can not fault them for not correcting it then, as it would not do it for them.
The truck would never do it when cold, only when warmed up, and only during some stop and go city driving.
It got even worse, to the point where I felt several times I really needed to shut the engine off to get it into gear, and then start it again.
I took it back, and the long story short is this:
They wanted to disassemble the transmission, which I thought was pointless, since nothing in the transmission would cause the input shaft to turn. Well, good thing they did, because most the synchros were blue from heat and the bronze facing was worn off.
I kept pressing for them to explore the clutch hydraulic circuit. They discovered quite a bit of dirt/particulates in the clutch slave cylinder circuit, and also a leak at the rear of the clutch master cylinder. Chrysler directed them to look for "contamination" in that circuit.
So, it was determined that the trans needed so much labor and parts that they installed a complete, new transmission assembly, and also replaced the clutch master cylinder.
It works fine now. I have 30,000 miles on the truck, so I was very motivated to get it fixed before my 36,000 miles rolled past.
I share this with you all to enter this clutch hydraulic issue in your memory banks for possible future use. I have always wished the truck had mechanical linkage....
Don't we love the elegance of simplicity to be found in the early Dodges? Someone else wrote that the early John Deeres could be fixed by any farm dog equipped only with an old pork chop bone....
My anvil contains no circuit boards and displays no LED's.
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