Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/270259
CHANGING LANES 26 MARCH 2014 // WWW.CHANGINGLANESDIGITAL.COM Bloody Knuckles late in 1918 and WWII completely eliminated them from the US market until the late 50s. Now, of course, FIAT is back and in force. They have recently completed the buyout of Chrysler and now they completely own one of Detroit's Big Three, which means that they also own Jeep. (I do get there in the end...). Given that the new Cherokee is truly part Alfa Romeo (also owned by FIAT), and the fact that I already own a French/American Jeep (due to the Renault/American Motors partnership in the 1980s), I am a little nervous about how this might affect parts availability on Jeeps of the future... or of the past and present for that matter. I'd hate to see the Fix It Again Tony slogan come back to haunt FIAT and us. Take Ol' Red, for example. The spate of clutch master cylinder and slave cylinder problems it has been having (which I wrote about in my last column) is specifically due to some Renault engineer deciding that he could do a better job than the American designers simply by putting the hydraulic slave cylinder inside the bell housing. The result of that decision is what caused me to have the tranny pulled from Jeep three times. Turns out that both the slave cylinder, manufactured somewhere in Europe was faulty – not once, but twice! The third time the tranny was pulled was because the mechanic got a small piece of grit on the rubber grommet sealing the hydraulic line to the cylinder, causing a leak of hydraulic fluid which stopped the clutch pedal from working. I tell you, it's a enough to make a tea total preacher start drinking and me, well, I'm not exactly close to being tea total as it is. But I can only buy so much Bourbon before the Mrs. starts making comments. Now, it is true that my local mechanic couldn't help the fact that he got two bad slave clynders in a row, but getting grit on a rubber seal is something he just has to own. And he did. Still, it meant that I had no Jeep for a couple of weeks, so I had to take my Escort to Idaho for the Thanksgiving holiday. You know where this is going, don't you? Mr. Murphy and Mother Nature did a tag team number on me. Murphy took care of the machinery and Mom decided that what we all needed was a Polar Vortex, which six weeks later is still has much of the country in its grip. The upshot of all this is that my Thanksgiving weekend getaway turned into a three week sojourn at my cabin. Yep, we got snowed and Ol' Red is finally street worthy after having the tranny pulled three times in five weeks. bloody knuckles 0314 cl.indd 2 2/6/14 1:56 PM