Hello Folks, First time posting. I need some assistance. I have a 2007 Jeep JK 4 Speed Automatic with 130,000 miles. I’m the original owner so I know how it was driven and that’s very gentle. My wife used it more for taking the kids to school and shopping. We do some light 4 wheeling on the beach and in the woods when camping but that’s about it. Now just two weeks ago whenever I shift from P to R or D there is a hesitation to engage unless I accelerate then it just jumps into gear. So what I did was, I replaced the transmission filter and also the pan because it was rusty. After doing that, shifting to 1 was a little better going into gear but there is still a hesitation when starting and after slowing at STOP sign then accelerating again. Shifting to R is still bad, I still need to accelerate just to get it to engage. BTW - I did not see any hard metal particles in the pan or on the magnet. There was just some really gooey silver stuff on it. Also, I added 5 quarts after I was done with the filter. I just can’t believe that the tranny will get messed up just driving the Jeep that way we did. Thank you in advance for any help.

 

I would try a bottle of Lubeguard, black bottle for atf-4 transmissions (read label to confirm). https://www.lubegard.com/products/black/
You can pick it up at most auto parts store. It worked well on my 08 with 134000 miles.

 

Thanks I will check this out. Got a hold of a scanner and got a bunch of codes. One of the codes is some kind of line pressure error which I noticed that there is a leak from the tranny cooler lines. I will fix this and hopefully be the source of the issue.

 

I just realized that I did not update this. I changed the filter, pan, and the fluid. That helped a little, but what fixed the issue was that leak on the trans cooler. It was probably loosing some line pressure. I’m back on the road.

 

Thanks for following this up. It's always good to hear a solution.