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Comment by Kevin F Smith on November 15, 2019 at 5:43pm

The flex plate is installed in the Jeep, and it is running great again and is super quiet now.  The shop installed a heavy duty flex plate with upgraded bolts, so HOPEFULLY this won't happen again.

Sweet!

Kev

Comment by Kevin F Smith on November 12, 2019 at 10:28am

Well...it could have been much worse!  It is a cracked flex plate!  They showed me the endoscope pictures they took, and that is what is causing the noise.  If it came apart completely (and it is cracked almost all the way around), it might have done some serious damage to the engine or the transmission or both.

So to replace the flex plate and bleed my brakes the rest of the way, the shop quoted me around 1200.00...which I think is a very fair price.

At least it wasn't the engine or the transmission itself!

The shop said it should be ready on Thursday.

Kev

Comment by Kevin F Smith on November 11, 2019 at 6:31pm

Anyone have mechanical experience with the old style Jeep Cherokees with the 4.0 I6 engine?  I'm bringing it to a shop to get looked at tomorrow, and want to be armed with some knowledge.

This is what it has been doing for the last 3 months:  The engine is making a clacking/ticking/ratcheting sound that seems to be coming from under the valve cover, but it is hard to tell.  It only starts making the noise after it warms up, and it doesn't do it all the time, and is intermittent.  It makes no noise when accelerating, but definitely makes the ratcheting/clacking sound when decelerating, and when idling...but not all the time.  The weird part is that it is RUNNING perfectly!  Oil pressure is normal, temp is normal, it runs and shifts normally, and there is no loss of power, no skips, no hesitation.  Just the noise.

The AC compressor has been without a hose since I got this Jeep, so its internals have been exposed to the elements for quite some time...and it is sitting right near where the noise is.  Bad bearings in the compressor maybe?  I have no idea!

Kev