87 XJ questions

I have an 87 Cherokee Leredo and I have some questions. One day my reverse decided to up and go out on me. It worked fine during the day, then when I parked at a resturant for dinner and got back into the car reverse no longer worked, but all the forward gears worked better then they had before. I tried changing the transmission fluid and filter (there was almost no debris in the pan) but it didn't help. Also I am hooking up mirror signal lights and need to know which wire to hook up to the positive lead from the lights. If anyone could help I would be very grateful.

You'll find some wiring diagrams ghere. Scroll down the list until you find your model.

http://www1.autozone.com/servlet/UiBroker?ForwardPage=/az/cds/en_us/0900823d/80/15/3e/8f/0900823d80153e8f.jsp

As far as your tranny goes, I don't understand what you mean by the forward gears working better. Draining the pan does not remove all of the old fluid. There is some trapped in the torque converter (assuming yours is an automatic).

What I ment by the forward gears getting stronger is that before reverse went out the car would stutter when I was driving, and it felt like the transmission was slipping at lower speeds. When reverse went out it no longer felt like it was slipping at all, and all gear shifts were as smooth as a brand new transmission. I also appreciate the link to the wireing diagrams, but sadly they don't show the turn signal wireing.

Oops....

Try this one. Not sure how well you can read it....

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That is a bit tough to read, but I can try some image inhancement to see if I can read it better.

If you send me a private message with an email address, I'll send you a high res one. Alternatively, you can download the entire '88 FSM (diagram should be the same) from:

http://www.lunghd.com/Downloads_and_Links/FSM.htm

Thanks. That should do just fine. Now if I could only figure out if I need a transmission rebuild to get my reverse back or if there might be a simpler way.

Other than checking the linkage, and maybe flushing, I'm not sure what to suggest.

How hard is it to check the linkage? Another thing that started acting up when reverse went out is that now park and neutral work just the same as drive... could it be a solenoid is stuck in the wrong position?

You mean you're always in gear? Have someone move the shifter back and forth (engine off of course), and observe the linkage moving underneath.

Ok. I didn't know if you could observe the linkage moving from underneith the car or not, and yes, I'm pretty much always in gear.