Being my first post I thought I would share my first Jeep story. With any luck my experience might help someone else in some way so here goes:

I was an auto tech for over ten years before I blew my back out and went into forced retirement. I have always wanted a Jeep but never had the opportunity until recently. I was searching CraigsList one day and found an ad for a 1996 XJ Country that looked to be in really good shape. I went to take a look and as it turns out is was pretty clean. After a hearty test drive I returned with my only observation being that the oil pressure seemed a bit low. I inquired to the guy and being that we were at his shop when he showed it to me he told me that up was current on all of its services. I thought to myself, ok, it's probably just a sender and being such a good deal, I forked over the cash and drove it home.

My first order of business was to fix the blown out PCV system hoses. During that process I found myself taking off the valve cover to clean out the broken pieces of PCV valve. Thats when I made the "discovery".


As you can see, I couldn't begin to tell you when the last oil change this poor girl had ever had. I got a good sinking feeling that it wasn't just a sender that would fix my problem. So I pulled the rockers and the oil pan to finish my inspection and here's what I found:


At last the culprit of the low oil pressure had been found. The pickup was almost 75% clogged and there was at least 1/2 inch of crud between the rockers. So, over the next few weeks, I proceeded to clean and degrease every inch of the motor that I could reach. Here is the results:

I also put a new rear main seal in for good measure while I was in there and with all new gaskets it was back together. I filled it up replacing one quart of oil with diesel fuel and ran it for 20 minutes. Changing the oil and filter, I did that two more times and then used all oil on the last one. I started it up and low and behold, there was my oil pressure, back from the dead. She is running great now with no leaks and no side effects. It took a lot of work but it was better than swapping in a new motor.

Next I will surely be doing all of the fluid services on her because if they coudn't even bother to change the oil, they sure didn't maintain the rest! I'm also glad I found this community where everyone can read and share experiences and ideas. I know I will be spending a lot of time here!

Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing def. was nasty seems youre on your way to better things. like the pics. of it cleaned up after youre done hope you have many miles left on her. Its a shame it was that BAD

First off, YUK. It may not have been the last owner who neglected it, but someone did.

Second, great job on the clean up. I hope all the crud is cleared out now.

Third, I have placed a couple of magnets on the bottom of my oil pan to stop any loose metal particles from getting re-cyled though the oil. pull magnets off before draining oil during changes to release metal.

Lastly, take care of your Jeep and it will take care of you. 235,xxx miles and going strong.

Thanks for the comments. I do hope to get many thousands more miles out of it because I do plan on treating her right. Good rule of thumb:take care of them and they will take care of you.

notop46: That is an interesting idea about the magnets. Do you do that just because of the high mileage?