Thought I was going to have to shoot my CRD last night to put it out of it's misery. Driving home after a gig at 60 mph the Jeep made a hard jerk then came out of overdrive then the engine light came on, drove another mile then it started to slow down. Got to the off ramp and went to turn and it could barely pull itself off the ramp. While it was idling it was clanking real loud at the back of the engine. I shut it off and took off my Predator thinking I was going to call the 800 # for a tow to the dealership then after about 5 minutes I started it and it was like normal again but still had the engine light on. I'm dropping it off Monday. Any clues?

Check the TSB sticky. There is one for the Trans that mentions clunks and noise from trans. You may have just qualified! Good luck.

Interesting...is someone keeping records of tranny build dates for these known failures? I took mine in to the dealer yesterday for the tranny filter change/flush TSB, and they said it didn't apply to my vehicle. Their read on the TSB was that since my tranny build date was March 4, 2005, that falls "between the two" date ranges. The TSB gives two sets of dates, and my build is between the two sets. My read of the TSB was that if it falls between within either given range, or between them.

Interesting...is someone keeping records of tranny build dates for these known failures? I took mine in to the dealer yesterday for the tranny filter change/flush TSB, and they said it didn't apply to my vehicle. Their read on the TSB was that since my tranny build date was March 4, 2005, that falls "between the two" date ranges. The TSB gives two sets of dates, and my build is between the two sets. My read of the TSB was that if it falls between within either given range, or between them.

My transmission build date was ~ February 15 - the filter tsb didn't apply to it either. Didn't matter, the torque converter failed without warning, only a rattling metallic sound from the tranny area. Tech said metal debris was all over the bottom of the pan, and the tranny cooler was completely clogged. It appears the tranny failures are not limited to just the ones with bad filters.

There is clearly something seriously wrong going on with these tranny failures - I wonder if DCX even has a clue - from the looks of things, they keep releasing tsb's with a "lets try this and see if it works" mentality.

Evertyhing I read on the (5)45RFE shows it to be almost bulletproof. But very application I've seen it on has been a gasolene engine. My other Liberty is an 02, with the same transmission (45RFE) with 50K on it - runs beautifully - never had a single problem with it. the only consistent failures I can find on it are on the CRD. Jeep claims they used a modified torque converter on the CRD to dampen the diesel engine vibrations. Could be they ended up getting junk quality converters for this application. Jeep needs to buy a qualify diesel rated torque converter and issue a recall for the CRD - before they start hitting astronomical failure rates - if that happens, their diesel introduction will end up with the same reputation that their minivan transmissions did in the 90's. They never did recover from that image, even long after they fixed the problem.

Ever see what a quality diesel torque converter is going for these days?? I would think they can rebuild your trans at least once or twice for the cost of a good converter. Maybe that's the plan!!?? Rebuild it once, maybe twice and warranty is over. The worst they do is break even. I think I have it figured out. I really hope not. Speaking of 90's chrysler mini-vans- I just sold my 92 plymouth voyager with 208,000 miles. On it's third trans and that one was on it's way out! I'm starting to get a bad vibe about all of this.