Gearbox Oil Leak Advice Required

[J66P]

Hi, Help / advice needed, sorry if it goes on a bit...

My Cherokee (1998 4ltr Auto) has developed a bad gearbox oil leak, I can't quite get my head round what is going on though so I thought I would put up a post to see if some body else has experienced the same problem and has an easy solution.

The gearbox is fine and has no leaks at all until you put it under load and it gets warm. Difficult to describe but if you are going along motorway at 70 MPH no problem, drive around town normally no problem but, go up a long drag ie.. up the valley road at Castleton, Derbyshire (about a 1 in 3 and 1/2 mile long max 20-25 MPH??) and I will get about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way up and it will start to leak badly out of the bellhousing straight on to the front pipe thus resulting in clouds of smoke following you. The funny thing is get back on flat for a while going steady on the right foot and it appears to cool down a little and all is well again, well it is until the next long drag. I feel pretty sure if I put trailer on with SJ on it would have same problem if I was a bit heavy on acceleration??

Now for the really strange thing, did around 130 miles greenlaning both on and off road and it never caused me a problem while off road only in the stages getting in between the the lanes.

I would have thought that the gearbox would have got hot while doing the slow off road driving because there is very little air flow unlike when you are driving down the road.

The gearbox used about 2 litres throughout the day and I replenised at every available opertunity so it didn't run low. The gearbox is not overfull, it changes beautifully it locks up ok in gears, there is no slipping between the gears and the aux cooling fan comes on and off as normal.

I have a spare gearbox but I don't want to change it if there could be a problem with the cooling side ie.. radiator, filter blockages etc.. is this a known fault that some one has had in past???

It appears that if I could keep the gearbox slightly cooler then it would be fine, does anyone know what sort of temperature the gearbox oil should run at, I will rig up a temp gauge somehow if I get an answer on this.

Help and advice would be appreciated before I go head strong into changing gearbox for no reason.

Cheers

[Bishops Finger]

Fling yourself onto Rockznrutz or J33P.0rg and beg an audience with the Doc... 8)  :lol:

[The Smiths]

I second R&R :wink www.rockznrutz.com

The doc also makes an appearance on Birty's so might answer you there 8)

[J66P]

Registered just waiting for them to get back to me so I can log on,

Cheers

[The Smiths]

I'll see you there then.  Most of admin are on holiday at the moment