New Information – After two years of driving with the T-18 I am still pleased, one problem I have had is a clutch binding issue. I determined that the problem was in the bell housing and would not be easy to fix due to the transmission being extremely heavy and cumbersome to remove. I have been living with the problem for about a year and after the last off-road trip I had enough. Apart the Jeep came.After removing the all the stuff I discovered that the nose cone (a & b) of the transmission was worn very badly from the throw-out bearing. Something came to at this point, I remembered reading an article on a similar T-18 swap where the original T-150 fork needed to be ground for clearance of the driver side stud transmission mount.
 (a) |
 (b) |
 (c) |
 (d) |
I could see the wear on the head of the stud from the fork binding against it. What was happening is the fork would hit the stud (c) causing the fork to twist. In turn the throw-out bearing was binding and wearing away the transmission’s nose cone. Obviously the cone needed to be replaced, and after a call to OK one was on the way along with a new throw-out bearing.
I also needed to grind the fork (d), this took almost no time and was easily accomplished with a die-grinder. I wish I would have remembered that article in the beginning. The Jeep is now back together and my clutch and I are happy.
See the original swap article: CJ T-18A Transmission Swap
