New clutch for a 1980 CJ 5

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wibornz

New member
My son has a CJ 5 and the clutch has gone out in it. He is in military and I plan to do the 12 drive down to his house and fix it while he is gone on some training missions. That way when he gets back, My wife, a bud of mine and I will be there upon his return. His wife knows that we are coming down to do this.

So the question is there any tips or tricks to doing this? Any special tools that I may need?

While I have not ever done a clutch replacement on a Jeep, I can't imagine it is much different than other clutch replacement. I am okay in the mechanical aptitude department, my bud is awesome. He builds 1500+ hp drag cars and has been wrenching for decades. So between the two of us, I figure we can make this happen.

He needs get back into the Jeep.
 
Awesome! Shouldn’t have any issue especially if your hanging with a dude who builds 1500 hp drag cars. Pretty straight forward. I replace mine back in high school (mid 90’s) by myself freezing my ass off.

What branch is your son in? My boy is in the Navy.
 
The one that owns the CJ5 is in the Army. I also have one in the Navy. They are both great men. My dad also did 32 years in the Navy and served in WWII. We love our military. The one that is in the Army has been in training for over a year and has not had time to fix his Jeep. If all goes good he should finish the training very soon and as a gift to all his hard work and dedication to our nation, I want to get this back up for him. He has been a great soldier, about 9 years of service and has been deployed. There has been a lot of sacrifice.

So my long time friend and I thought there would be no better way to reward him for all of his work than to get his Jeep back up and road worthy so he doesn't have to drive the wife's Hyundai to his potential new unit if all goes well. Fingers crossed and hey I already bought the clutch kit. Now he just needs to push through these final days, stay injury free and survive struggle.

It has been a hard year or so on me and my wife. I can only imagine what it is like for him and his wife.
 
Thank you and your family for all they done for this country!

The hardest part I remembered from mine were a couple frozen bolts. Lots of Penetrating oil spray will usually do the trick.

Good luck!


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Had the transmission and T-case out in about 2 hours. Put a new clutch, throw out bearing and a new pressure plate in the Jeep. It went back together real easy. It did not need it, but I had it apart so it got it anyways. So what was the problem. There is a rod that comes out of the top of the transmission to the shifter and and the nut on the end of that rod was loose making the Jeep shift terrible. Note I was not there when my son pulled the shifters out of the Jeep. So I did not notice it until we put the shifters back in after the new clutch was installed.

Also adjusted the carb and hooked up the vacuum limes correctly, and set the timing. The little CJ5 purred like a new born kitten. I finished this on the morning that my son graduated from some very cool training. His CJ5 was down since January and he did not have the time to work on it. So after almost two years of training, he got his Jeep back on the same day. It was a pretty cool day. We celebrated with a cruise in the CJ5, then some fine cigars, a tumbler of Old Rip Van Wrinkle bourbon and fire.
 
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