Chrysler 42LE / 42RLE

Chrysler's four-speed longitudinal automatic, in two forms — the 42LE driving the front wheels of the LH cars, and the 42RLE driving the rear wheels of the Wrangler, the Liberty, the Dakota and the LX cars.

⚑ The name says which, and it is the whole reason they share a page. Chrysler's codes carry two numbers — the ratio count and the torque class — then letters for the unit: LE is longitudinal electronic, TE is transverse electronic. So the 41TE Ultradrive is a different gearbox on a different page, and the 42RLE is this one with the differential taken out and a tailshaft put on.

It is not the Aisin AW50-42LE, and the two names differ by a prefix nobody prints consistently. Aisin's is a transverse four-speed in Volvos and Saabs; this one is Chrysler's, laid out longitudinally for a front-drive platform with the engine turned around. The catalogue holds both, and a search for 42LE alone will find the wrong one half the time.

It is an Ultradrive derivative, so it inherits the family's defining requirement: ATF+4, and nothing else. A conventional Dexron produces shudder, then slipping, then failure — the same story as the transverse 41TE, and the same reason so many were condemned early.

Its own characteristic failure is the solenoid pack and the transmission control relay, producing a limp mode locked in second that reads as catastrophic and is a bolt-on part.

The Prowler's is the same transmission despite the car being nothing like an Intrepid — which makes the Intrepid's very large service literature directly useful to an owner who would never think to look there.

In the Jeeps it is the gearbox behind a transfer case, and a complaint that reads as a transmission fault on a Wrangler or a Liberty is often the transfer case or its shift linkage. Check which one is actually making the noise before opening either.