And, gee. Lookit that guy. Footloose and fancy free.
I love the keep-it-in-the-family, handmedown-kine going on here. That’s pretty sweet.
For the eight or so years that I owned my Jeep, I can only remember one or two times when it was ever broke enough to not be driveable. “Broke enough to not be driveable” is the kind of vocabulary you develop when you’re a) young, broke, and mechanically inept, b) driving a 25-year old Jeep, or c) the owner of only one car. I was of course d) all of the above.
Then the day comes when the third “broke enough” strike came. I remember it sounding like a huge pop, and then could feel something was not right in the accelerator. The engine was working fine, but it felt like it wasn’t connected to the wheels anymore, being able to rev to its heart’s content…it’s geriatric, 1,500 rpm redline kinda heart’s content.
(No pictures yet. I’ve got a bad feeling about this post…)
I pulled over, shut it off, and did a quick once around for any signs of distress. No smoke, sparks, fluids, or shrapnel to be seen underneath. Huh? That was weird. Got back in, turned the XJ back on, shifted into D, and off we went like nothing ever happened.
But by the time we got home and I could crawl back underneath I began to see signs that all was not well. Best as I could figure the chain in the transfer case must have jumped a tooth or something, putting a crack in the case where gear oil was slowly leaking out. Not the end of the world, but at the time that was about as bad as saying to the know-nothing-mechanical-me that a piston had escaped the engine block.
And you know, I haven’t even gotten to the tragic part yet (I told you this would happen. It’s not a bloody memoir man!).
Even though I had no idea how I was going to fix this, it was never a question of whether or not I would. Of course I would fix it…eventually. That’s what we always did with this thing, and that’s what had kept it on the road for north of 300k miles and almost 3 decades of hard service.
I think that one of the best thing I learned from my dad, not just about cars, but about most things in life, was that you didn’t just abandon broken things. When you bought something in my family you didn’t just come to own it, you became responsible for it. My family was not raised in the throw-away culture of today. New stuff worth buying is expensive, thus you keep things working as long as you can. Hopefully, when it is time to buy something new, you know what’s worth spending money on because you know what kind of relationship you’re getting yourself into.
I can’t claim to be a purist when it comes to this ethic, but I wish I was. I like the idea of keeping something alive, not because of any kind of collector’s mentality, eye towards investment, or #BIFL influence, but simply because it says what kind of guy I’d like to be. The kind you can count on. Seems more often than not that kind of thought pays you back in kind. If you’re able to count on something, it should be able to expect the same from you.
I didn’t know how, but I knew that eventually I’d fix this issue. But something I did know now, was that I needed a running car. We just so happened to have a large savings fund at the time set aside for a big move we were planning in the coming months. Looks like God had other plans for the money.
May 2009 | 114,000 miles
That silver '84 AMC Cherokee may have been the first car I ever owned, but the silver '01 Jeep Cherokee we purchased at that time was the first car I ever bought. Cash.
I’ll get to the tragic part of the story next…(For the love, man…what the heck am I reading here?!)
1 Like
HUZZAH!
We may not agree on all things metaphysical, but this we do agree on–whatever attitude/energy/vibes you put out into the universe, that’s what ultimately comes back to you.
I get the self-deprecating device you’re using and appreciate the genuine concern for the audience, but I hope you truly know everyone here is getting a real kick out of your style. Your posts are some of the best things I read most days.
So the old, silver XJ is knocking on death’s door. It’s a loved, but cantankerous ol’ bastid, as eager to bankrupt as it is to serve. Why wouldn’t you buy another?
1 Like
Alright, now for the sucky part.
There was something appealing to me about owning one of the first XJ Cherokees every made as well as one of the last. The fact that they were the same color was a bonus. My plan was to someday get the other Jeep back into health so that we could have a his and hers fleet, but for now we were having too much fun in the new car to bother much with the old. Add to that the hurdles of wrenching in an apartment parking lot and my basic grease monkey knowledge of car repair and the '84 just sat and sat.
We eventually moved to a rental house in the city with a back alley parking space I could stick the '84 in, while parking the '01 on the street in front of the house. I was to quickly find that city life (and city people) was not for me. And it would cost me my first Jeep.
Some neighbor must have called the city to report my “junk car” sitting back in our alleyway parking spot, for I received a letter demanding that I either pay them some ridiculous fine or dispose of the vehicle. I could understand the intent of such an ordinance, but it wasn’t as if my car was on cinder blocks with a tree growing up through the trunk. Grrr…anyways, long story short I could not afford the fine or queer registration category it would have taken for me to legally keep the car and had to make the decision to send it off.
To this day I refuse to live within the city limits, nor under the thumb of any home owner’s association. I still get riled up just thinking about it now. Meddlesome people, in whatever flavor they come in, may take it upon themselves to stick their obtrusive heads up their own asses.
As for me, lesson learned the hard way. 'Tis the gearhead project.
1 Like
Hear, hear.
Living next door to a real, actual hoarder whose house is deteriorating to the point the neighbor on the other side paid to have her front yard cleaned up so he could sell his house, and in a neighborhood what’s had more than few dead vehicles left to rot among the knee-high weeds making up the front lawns—and just as many jackass Harley owners whose gaudy pieces of shit can’t seem to stay running below WOT—I can see the spirit of the HOA, but I ain’t buying it.
Maybe, if I saw anything other than petty, closeted bigotry on that NextDoor app, I might be convinced there’s hope for a true, democratic association of homeowners, but such is not the case. NIMBYs with relative anonymity and a microphone are made even worse with authority to fine and exert power over others’ property, imo.
Been thinking a lot about selling the house, paying cash for an old Class A, and Getting TFO of the big city. There’s just the issue of a shy little girl finally starting to blossom into a socialite with friends at the excellent elementary school down the street.
Hopefully you’ve heard that saying … “Two is one, one is none.” … by this point in your life, but if you haven’t let my situation serve as an anchoring illustration for why it is a good bit of wisdom to stick to. I went from only having one functional car to still only having one functional car when I bought my second Jeep.
The good intentions to fix the old Jeep “someday” wouldn’t help if some sooner day my new Jeep decided to break down. “One is none” in the later scenario. What good would it serve to have two broken down Cherokees, even if they were the same color and all that other boring stuff?
Lesson learned, if you’re going to own two cars make sure they both work so that you’ve always got a backup. And after losing my '84 due to its non-running condition (and my childish negligence), when you have one that’s down don’t leave it like that just because you have a backup to serve you. Get to getting it back on the road. “Two is one, one is none.”
A few years down the road in this story we had some friends gift us a blue minivan as we were expecting a second and third son. And it was nice to have another car, not just to fit all the kid car seats, but to have a bit of family infrastructure redundancy. The '01 XJ had given us years of reliable service, but there was always that hanging fear that we’d be left car-less at any moment.
And that moment would eventually come, and the second car would prove just in the nick of time. Our Cherokee was long overdue for some kind of debilitating failure (it’s a Jeep thing). So when I began to noticed that a sweet smell and a low coolant overflow reservoir were becoming a more and more frequent phenomenon, it didn’t take long to find the reason. Looks like my Cherokee was going to need a new radiator.
No big deal in hindsight, but at the time it was about as intimidating as a broken transfer case. I couldn’t afford to send it off for professional repairs, but I had no idea how I was going to fix it. Yet at least I knew enough to know I had to try.
And sooner than later this time. “Two is one, one is none.”
1 Like
At this stage of things my mechanical knowledge bank consisted of how to check fluids, change oil, and scrape ice off the windshield. I was terribly green. And worse than that, the last memory I had of trying to do something like I was about to undertake here was an utter failure.
I remember coming out of work one evening to find a pool of antifreeze underneath my '84 Cherokee. A little poking around with the help of my coworkers revealed that it was coming from the weep hole on the water pump. “Seals gone bad, bud. Don’t worry though. Easy fix.”
Sure, I thought. Maybe for you. Sounds like open-heart surgery to me.
After a bit of internal back and forth I decided to give it a go. I purchased a new water pump from the the local part store, and proceeded to tear into the repair with the basic hand tools I had lying around. Walk before you run. Crawl before you walk. This operation was equivalent to whatever you do before you crawl. I would have had more success ordering a pizza from a Chinese restaurant in Portuguese.
After being repulsed several times, I was finally able to get the three or four bolts off holding the old pump to the front of the block. And with the hard part over I rushed into installing the new piece, only to immediately strip out the bolt holes by overtightening things. Oops.
If I didn’t know how to undo a hose clamp imagine how perplexed I was then with this new hurdle. I thought I broke the engine for Pete’s sake. I took months to get the old girl back together, and then only after letting “professionals” stack washers and thread sealant until the pump finally sealed.
I was not confident going into this new coolant leak on the new Jeep. In fact, it conjured up old fears of failure. But it needed to be done, and if I couldn’t afford to have someone else do it (quotes I got seemed ludicrously expensive…everything seems like that when you’re poor, though), looks like I would have to be the man for the job.
I’m not sure why, but there is something encouraging about buying parts for a project. I guess it gave me a tangible picture of what I was getting into. It also gave me a bit of momentum heading into things. Though nothing was yet done, once I hit the order button for the stuff I needed, it felt like things were set in motion that could not easily be undone.
Second time around, with some hope that it would turn out better this time. A little confidence can go a long way (especially in hindsight…one small step for me then, one giant leap for me now).
2 Likes
April/May 2012 | 156,860 miles
It was in preparing for this job that I stumbled deeply into the treasure troves of internet forums. It seemed that everything I could ever need to know about my Jeep could be both found, explained in detail, demonstrated on video, and argued about pedantically for page after page.
Something that I found in all my searching was some disturbing news about my particular model year Cherokee. There was a cylinder head casting defect in the '00 and '01 model year XJs. The dreaded 0331 casting would easily crack if the engine overheated (according to the internet).
That kind of news led me down the “preventative maintenance” road. Before, by default I was a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it kind of person.” But the sense of “A stitch in time, saves nine” seemed to sound like a smarter way to do things. I think this went together with the other gearhead mindset of “while you’re in there…” thinking. Forums seemed to impart all kinds of contagious ways of thinking.
Instead of simply replacing the radiator, I reasoned that it would make sense to preemptively replace the rest of the cooling system components while I was in there. The Jeep’s coolant system is super basic and simple, and with the threat of a cracked head in the event of this thing ever overheating, I figured might as well make sure everything is fresh and up to bar.
I addition to basic maintenance, I also did my first tune-up. If the 0331 head is a disadvantage of the '01 model year, then the introduction of coil packs was a plus. It made it almost idiot proof with no distributor to fiddle with or wires to untangle.
As part of the “tune-up” I cleaned up all the idle air components, and even experimented with that magic potion called Sea Foam. The smoke show would have been terrifying if the “experts” on the internet had not assured me that it was supposed to do that.
Finally I got into the scariest parts. Opening up any part of the engine was to me like cutting into somebody’s chest. I was very nervous of what was underneath, and with the past looming in recent memory, even more nervous that I might mess something major up.
Thankfully this time around I managed to not cock anything up. Water pump came off and went back on with no issues, as did the thermostat housing and coolant pipes. The leaky rocker arm cover also gave no fight, and the sight of all those oily “engine things” underneath was like looking at magic to this crass Philistine.
I buttoned everything back up, filled up with fresh fluids, and to my novice delight brought the Jeep back to perfect working order. For me, this was the beginning. I had done the impossible. I was now a gearhead, even if only a crawling one.
2 Likes
June 2012 | 157,200 miles
And how about from crawling to tottering…
On another internet rabbit trail I heard whispers of some promising folk medicines regarding the Cherokee air conditioner. Hmm… air conditioning. That sounds like it would be nice.
I to this point had never owned a car with a functioning air conditioning system. My '84 Jeep had hand crank windows that cooled to whatever speed you moved. It was therefore a huge leap forward in technology to go to … not air conditioning … but electric windows in the '01. I knew the new Jeep’s ac didn’t work when I bought it, but was so used to my trucker’s tan that it wasn’t a major deal breaker.
But with kids… it would kinda be nice to spoil them with the comforts of climate control.
The rumors went that often ac compressors were condemned prematurely, when all they needed to restore their function was a bit of TLC. Corrosion could make the magnetic effect of the compressor’s clutch too weak to engage, or could cause it to disengage sporadically. Also, the “air gap” between the clutch and the magnet could need to be tuned through the removal of small shims. Worth a look, I figured.
A little Scotch-brite, a little elbow grease, and a shim removed… and wouldn’t you know. I now had air conditioning. Cool.
I threw on a new serpentine belt as a last bit of preventative maintenance, and kept the old one as an emergency spare tucked away in the back. I was confident that the Jeep was ready to go reliably anywhere I’d need it to. I was also more and more confident that I’d be able to roll up my sleeves in the event that something broke along the way.
2 Likes
It’s s beautiful thing, is it not?
I am learning so many clever platitudes in this thread.
TOP SCORE.
1 Like
Yep…which is one of the main reasons I’m here. Keep striking until it catches fire.
Good to have a place I feel comfortable dumping all this random stuff. Not really fit for a Jeep forum, because it isn’t really about the Jeep. It’s about the gearhead. He’s the project.
1 Like
July 2012
Next up isn’t more building, but a bit of what the build is for. The cars aren’t the end, but a conduit towards it. A family fixture, around which we’d make and remember stories. That July we’d load up the Cherokee for a trip up into the mountains of West Virginia.
By this time we were three boys deep, which meant a very full Jeep. The backseat just fit three car seats, and all the random kid stuff piled high in the back. Thankfully my dad would be joining us, which meant we could chuck some of our stuff in the back of his red '95.
Just like the XJs, this cabin has been in our family for three generations as well. My dad helped build it together with a friend of the family when he was a teenager. It’s nestled in the Monongahela National Forest, and has always served as a basecamp for our adventures up there.
I guess you can say four generations now.
1 Like
August 2012
Well… at the next state inspection I was informed by the mechanic that I had a leaky rear axle seal. Ok, with my new confidence and willingness to learn to do it myself I told him I’d take car of it. Not to mention I was still poor. Then I hit the internet to see how…and came to discover two new levels to this gearhead thing.
Why simply fix something when you can upgrade? Do you even mod, bro?
To fix these seals I’d have to pull the rear axles and drum brakes off the axle tubes. And Jeepers being the guys they are had already figured out that the rear disc brakes off a ZJ Grand Cherokee would bolt up in place of the stone age drums. Really? Wow, that sounds perfect. Let’s do that then.
Forget Disneyworld. The junkyard is the happiest place on earth (for me).
To source these parts I’d need to find a donor vehicle in a local pick-n-pull yard. Before this time, I never knew such places existed. But boy, O boy has my life changed since this discovery. Nearby I found a suitable ZJ for plundering, and came away with all the raw materials for my first foray into the next level of gearhead life.
1 Like
This guy gets it. 
Thank you.
It is indeed a magical place. And yet, also sad.
Speaking of magic, I feel like your wife is smiling in every picture where we see her face. Is she just naturally better at choosing joy, or are you careful to only photograph her from behind when she’s less than pleased? 
This is the face you learn from the trenches of raising four rowdy boys. Sarah Connor comes to mind… 
1 Like
July - September 2013 | 167,500 miles
The following year I decided to crack into the rear end of the Cherokee. Incidentally, this was right before the annual state inspection where last year’s mechanic would probably not appreciate seeing the same issue unaddressed that he let me slide on last time around.
As everything up to this point had been, this too was uncharted waters. But past experience gave a bit of wind in the sails to not only attempt the repair, but also to explore the waters farther offshore. The plan was to replace the rear axle seals (because they were leaking and I didn’t want to pay someone else to do it…because I was still poor), and while I was in there go ahead and replace the rear wheel bearings. And since the rear drums were in such poor nick (and were universally seen as a pain in the ass to work on), I’d attempt to modify the rear brake setup, upgrading it with the rear disc brakes off of a completely different vehicle.
I’m sure that the same kind of thrill that pushes guys past the horizon at sea is the same kind of thrill that goes on with first time forays in the driveway. It was exciting to crack open the rear differential, and though gear oil stinks to high heavens, I can still remember smelling it for the first time when I took the above picture. It’s likely similar to an explorer eating some alien delicacy for the first time on an unfamiliar shore. Yeah, it may taste horrible, but it’s an experience that will always stick with him.
Here’s a hindsight insert, well out of time with what I was thinking about while laying underneath that rear axle. I listened to Scott Brady recently talk on the Overland Journal Podcast about making sure to spend more money on the adventure than on modifying the vehicle you planned to take on the adventure. He’s right, as far as he was making his point.
But there is a certain amount of adventure associated with working on your vehicle, learning and doing things you’ve never done before. Sure, wrenching does become familiar at a later point and mundane tasks lose the fun that was once associated with them. But it was definitely at least partly that thrill that used to send you out into a freezing apartment complex parking lot to change your brake pads.
Maybe a better rule would be to make sure to spend money on adventure, in whatever form it comes. And it doesn’t take a lot of money when you can do it yourself, and where there are magical wonderlands out there called junkyards. Sails up, onward to the next adventure.
1 Like
That might be my favorite quote from TGP yet. 
2 Likes
July - September 2013 | 167,500 miles
If working on my own stuff could be seen as an adventure with every new endeavor, then acquiring new tools should be seen as all the glitzy adventurer kit. An adventurer needs his weapons, his magic keys, his maps. And the more perilous the quest, the more fabled your steel.
As the dinky Fisher Price pliers broke or the cheap Chinesium sockets rounded things off, I’d taken the initiative to slowly level up my kit. There was also a few clutch gifts included in there, like the Craftsman socket set from my dad. Thinking about how long I’ve had that thing and all that it’s enabled me to do, it might be one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given. I’ve taken to giving friends and young guys I’ve mentored a bag of basic tools as wedding presents as a result. Every guy needs the basics, and he can buy the better stuff as his own adventure gets more serious.
And this particular job required a tool that I neither had, nor knew existed. Yet thankfully I was made aware of another key gearhead milestone at this stage…tool rentals at the local parts slinger.
This slide hammer thingy made an impossible job somehow possible…just like a magic key. Looking at it again in this picture I still can’t help but see the thingy Arnold Schwarzenegger stuck up his nose in Total Recall. Oh the things the right tool makes possible, be it in a driveway on Earth or while vacationing on Mars.
Nice thing for a poor guy like me was that I could take the Martian Nose Picker back for a full refund once I was done saving the planet.
July - September 2013 | 167,500 miles
Down to business.
I swapped out the XJ wheel studs for longer ZJ ones in order to accommodate the discs.
After refitting the axles I noticed how icky the rear diff cover looked, so I figured I’d go ahead and paint it. So I painted it…black. What other color would someone paint these things? Diff covers on Jeeps and trucks to me are like underwear (on a fat guy). The less of it you see the better. Who wants to see a fat guy with red or worse, lime green underwear peeking out? Not cool (though they’re really trying hard there). Filled it up with some fresh, but no less stank gear oil and the axle was good. No leaks.
I also tried my hand at rebuilding calipers. Learned from this debacle that sometimes you can spend more money trying to save it. At least they turned out shiny black after painting them. That’s cool. Couldn’t say the same thing about my brake rotors, but at this time I didn’t know that you were supposed to put shiny, slotted discs with holes all in them on so you can take sick pics. I thought that brakes were supposed to be rusty, hence the patina.
I figured I’d better check the front brakes while working on the rears, and probably a good thing I did. They were a widdle bit worn out. I figured I’d replace the calipers while I was at it to know that all four corners were new.
Front calipers weren’t as shiny as the rears, but the rotors were nice and patina’d. So cool.
Next was a bunch of little annoying Chrysler crap to fix, like rear hatch lift struts so the thing would quit slamming shut on my head, and rear hatch bumper thingies to stop the thing from slamming shut on the Jeep. The little things like that are often cooler than the shiny stuff doomed to rust into bland obscurity.
Last items to button up would be another oil change, and another leak repair. The 4.0L has four notorious leak spots when it comes to oil: 1) the rocker arm cover, 2) the rear main seal, 3) the oil pan gasket, and 4) the oil filter adapter o-rings. I fixed the first already, and as far as the second and third item they weren’t bothering me enough to worry about. But item number four had become a major nuisance. But after fixing that…I had one of the few relatively leak-free Cherokees in the whole world. And that was super cool.
Project almost wrapped up, with one more frontier to tackle.
2 Likes
September 2013 | 167,500 miles
And now we get to my first taste of magic.
In addition to all that other stuff, the Cherokee had a problem with the driver-side window where it wouldn’t roll down very well. I looked into it and found there to be a pretty gnarled up worm drive, so a new regulator was in order.
But there was another issue related to the new fangled power windows on this thing. The child lock feature on the windows, that button that gives you the power to restrict the freedom of all passengers from enjoying fresh air like a you were some sort of communist dictator, well like communism…was broken. Never had to worry about anything like this back in the horse and buggy days of the old Jeep.
Fixing it would be as simple as throwing money at a new part. But there was a familiar problem…same problem as every other time … young guy, lots of kids, blue collar know nothing, with a massive amount of student loan debt … you know the profile. When you’re trying to crawl out of a hole like debt, you eventually get determined and start to look for the shortest road to freedom. We were trying to save money wherever we could to hurl into the debt monster. And that meant trying something different.
Another level up. Fixing parts versus reflex replacing them.
The switch was disgusting, but that wasn’t the issue. I had to crack into it in order to find the real problem. It was a cracked solder point on the underlying circuit board I was told to look for. The fickle nature of the dictator switch was caused by a poor connection, and I would have to employ magic to mend it.
Behold the wand of a level one wizard. Melting metal in order to bring something back to life just sounds like sorcery to me…in the good kinda way. I’m not sure why this got me so excited, nor why the thought of learning to braze and weld in the future does the same, but I really love this kinda stuff.
To me it is the difference between babysitting and conceiving a child. Any civilized person can can be expected to do thirty minutes of the former, but it takes magic and a change of life for the latter. I am a maintenance man by profession. I fix stuff that other people break. I often feel that I am in many ways a professional babysitter of people pretending to be adults. But I don’t create things.
I want to get to the place where I can create new things out of what my hands touch, and when I see fabrication and entrepreneurs and writers and artists and parents doing that kind of stuff, it’s inspiring.
It isn’t soldering, or fixing a circuit board, or even welding steel that I’m necessarily talking about. It’s the mentality and skill combined to take any idea and bring it to life with hard work. That’s magic. That’s real wizard level stuff. I want to get there someday. And here was me on my first day at Hogwarts or whatever dope school Gandalf went to when he was a kid.
P.S. - the repair worked. All of the repairs worked. And so did the upgrades. The Jeep was better than ever, and in many ways so was I. We were ready for another round of adventures.
1 Like