rangerone

1998 cherokee 4.0 auto trans

well it just started acting up on me yesterday. it will act exactly as if its running out of fuel. sputter and miss, loose power and i've gotten a few backfires. its only done it on 2 occasions and lasted 10-30 seconds each time.

about 1500 miles ago i did a full tune up. plugs wires cap and button. it ran perfect up until now.

pulled my codes and the only code i have is fuel sending unit, but that code has been there since i bought the jeep. fuel gauge does not work btw. i've been planning to replace the pump for a while now, so i can get a gas gauge to work.

do these symptoms sound like anything other than a pump? i will check my fuel pressure tomarrow. anything else i should check?

Aaron N.S.

I had a broken sending unit wire and a crack in the pickup tube on my 89, it was doing the same thing it would sputter as the power for the pump would cut in and out, until one day in the middle of the intersection is straight up died. I was lucky, I resoldered the connection and soldered the crack in the pickup and so far so good. Skid plates on the fuel tank are good... keeps from smashing the tank and breaking the pump

rangerone

question on brand of pump to get.

carter
airtex
bosch (i don't think i can afford this one $300+)
Napa brand

i'm really tight on cash atm, who isnt in this economy. but i'm hoping i get in there and can adjust modify the float, to get it working. then just buy a pump for $100 and not the whole unit.

rangerone

any ideas/comments?

Aaron N.S.

get one with a lifetime warranty On my sending unit it would read about 1/4 tank off. I used an eraser and cleaned the contacts and rearched the contact and made sure the bowl wasn't full and it's worked like a charm ever since

99 Purple XJ

please dont buy a carter io know a person who went through 5 in 1 year they are garbage

rangerone

just won an oem pump with 101k on it for $32.50 on ebay. hopefull it works when it gets here.

93turqXJ

Ok so I have a similar problem, I have a XJ.

IT started with the PO saying that it "bucked" intermittently on the highway, meaning that it would loose power and then gain it back. He replaced the pump and still had the problem. He noticed that it did it less when using Shell gas, dirty injectors?

My Symptoms:

For the past 4 months when I come to a stop the engine would struggle to hold idle and run 500 rpms for ten seconds approximatley then jump up to 1300 rpms for a brief second then settle to normal idle. I found that when i pop into nuetral it does the jump to 1300 to idle immediatley instead of the ten seconds. This occured at random times no more than twice a day.

Now since saturday, I went wheeling sat and may have done some damage to the tank, but IDK for sure, accelerating from stop/slow speed intermittently it would feel like it didnt have power then it would find that power, almost like it was hesitating and couldnt find the power. Like i said this has been an on off problem since sat.

Today was the worst I was having the previous two problems then a loss of power going 45mph struggling to keep the same speed, it felt like it wanted to cut off but recovered then was fine for the rest of the night.

I am just so confused as to what in the hell is the problem and I am hoping to find some help being that this was the first thread i saw in the oem tech section, coincidence? Idk but im glad I got on here.

Oh btw Ive always noticed the bucking on highway thing since Ive had it, like once a week for like five min, I put fuel cleaner in every month seems to help.

rangerone

my old work partner had a ford van and the fuel tank was full of rest and debris. about every 100 miles the screens would clog and run like crap. had to climb under the van, pull a fuel line and blow the crap off the screen. then drive another 100 miles and repeat. lol

does your xj have a plastic or steel tank? maybe a simmilar problem.

93turqXJ

Its a metal tank. I dont think theres anything like that in it cause the fuel pump was installed less than two years ago.

And like I said I went wheelin sat so i could have damaged the pump. I did jump it.

Aaron N.S.

dirty filter. you may be sucking air too. does it do it w/ a full tank compared to a 1/2 tank or less? When my pickup tube was F'd it worked fine until the fuel level dropped well that was until the power wire broke

adkodak

Check your injectors, I just did a full cleaning on mine and amazing to see how much crap hard deposited in them in 13 years. Check your fuel rail and your filter too, not every gas station gives perfectly clean gas, god knows walmarts is terrible. Try some b-12 chemtool and maybe try and run a tank or two of 93 octane help break down and burn off any issues.

93turqXJ

Yes!! Right now its below a third of a tank and the symptoms are getting worse. Ive noticed the buccking on highway either with a FULL tank or below a quarter tank, maybe its in my head or a coincidinece idk, still doesnt explain the idling problem though

I was thinking injectors because the jeep is 18 years old and could explain all the symptoms, just not sure if they could cause that big of a problem.


Also I think i heard a backfiring noise to like a popping sound, again not sure could have been a grinding, but i heard this under accelerating while the enginge was searching for power

rangerone

scanned my check engine light yesterday. had a code for my upstream O2 sensor as being bad. read abit about bad O2 sensor symptoms, they seem to match the symptoms i was having. especially considering there was a pattern to the rough running.

about 3 miles from my house it would start running as if i was out of gas, loose power, miss and backfire. this would go on for a mile or 2 then settle down and run normal the rest of the way to work. then on the way home it would do the same about 3 miles from work. maybe the heating element was failing?

leaving to work now, with a new )2 installed. i'll update later tonight if that fixed my issue.

bought the O2 at napa, part number NGK 23151 cost was $44.48. check prices before you guy's buy though, the closest to my house napa wanted $67 the one 5 miles awasy was $20 cheaper for the same part number. deffinatly worth the trip.

poppajeep

hey, rangerone. I'm not sure if your XJ would qualify, but my son in law took their '97 into the dealer for a recall on the pump and level sensor. they replaced it, and sent them home. Now, it works well. The level sensor wasn't working well in theirs, either. I know this doesn't help your rough running, but it might help with your gauge issues. My '95 was running poorly recently, sounding really bad, and I dumped a whole big bottle of Lucas fuel treatment into the tank, drove it a few miles, and it cleaned up a lot. Crappy gas with a high price might be a lot of our problems. Hope this helps