How-To Tuesday: JK Shift Linkage Repair
You probably had no idea that I was about to drop the Jeep boogie-man on your doorstep, did you? The little guy in the picture above is the nemesis of many a Jeep owner. That little white piece of plastic will set you back a whopping one U.S. dollar in most places. But it will also set you back several hours of annoying time, assuming that you figure it out quickly. So what is it? You are looking at a linkage bushing.
Turns out that the engineers designing the Jeep decided to do some cost cutting. One of those savings is the bushing linkage on several locations hidden deep within your Jeep. If you’ve never had to deal with this particular issue, well consider yourself lucky. This sadly is becoming a more common issue as days pass from the build of your JK. While plastic, generally speaking, can be a sturdy and long lasting product, for whatever reason, this little guy appears to give up the ghost quickly on the JK.
This week’s How-To Tuesday article goes into detail about how to replace a bushing on the 4×4 linkage. There are several locations where this bushing is located throughout the Jeep, but failure appears to be high in the location detailed in the article.
Bad news? I wish I could say that this was one of the easier fixes that we have highlighted, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Good news? Following the steps outlined in the article should save you some time in trying to get this project completed more easily, with hopefully less time spent trying to search for answers.
Have you had to deal with this annoying problem? Let the community know your tricks to getting this project done faster.