good morning,
bought a grand cherokee overland today. 2003 with only 23,000 miles. it was a car owned by a friend of mine that kept it at his vacation home so it didn't see much use. the car runs and drives fine and everything seems to work ok. it has the big v8 . the check engine light is on and had 5 codes. three were evap codes and two are oxygen sensor codes. i cleared the codes and the evap codes went away but the o2 sensor stuff came right back and i can deal with those. there is a " no or bad tire sensor" chime that comes and goes that i would like to disable if possible.

beyond that my question would be , does this year and model have any known issues that i need to be thinking about or doing something about in advance ? i am a well experienced and well equipped mechanic so any work will be straight forward but i have no experience at all with these vehicles.

thx

steve

 

Good buy. 03 is a good year for the GC. I had an 03 with the 6 & loved it. I don't believe there are any major or specific issues as it wasn't the beginning or end of their production.

Can't help much with the codes as I never owned any with the 8's.

 

Start by replacing the affected O2 sensors. Replace your tire pressure monitors. The battery in them has likely died.

 

Welcome to the Forum Steve

Great find on the GCO!

Is this going to be a Daily Driver for you Or are you going to push the limits on the trails?

welcome again

 

simple daily driver for my girlfriend. the car is in the carribean and the roads here aren't that good so its not going see any speeds faster than maybe 50 on the one decent road there is here. the rest is paved with pot holes.

its a nice car and , essentially " as new" . for 5 grand i figured i had to buy it.

if anybody thinks of anything or has any general advice, i'm happy to hear it. and thx again.

 

If you're talking about the 4.7 V8, be very careful about overheating it. They are prone to head warping when overheated. There's a good website with all the info you need to work on it. It's wjjeeps.com. They even tell you how to change interior light bulbs!

 

thats good advice and thank you.

 

Can we see some pictures? Or are you just going to sit and talk about it [emoji12]

 

you want to see a picture of an 11 year old box stock jeep cherokee ? ok... ill take one and post it but you really need to get out of the house more on weekends i think...

 

No need to be hostile about anything. You took the time to post about an "11 year old box stock jeep cherokee" so why not just throw up some pics? Sounded like you got a hell of a good deal so I was just curious how great the condition was.

 

humor... not hostility. the car has been subjected to the carribean environment in general and worse than average roads for its life . the shock bushings were all dried out and loose and once i tightend them up the car runs and drives as new. the cosmetics are an 8 out of 10 w/ no damage or rust . the guy that owned it is a multi millionaire so it saw all its normal service. the fuel milage is pretty poor but with the bad o2 sensor and the fact that it has a big v8 in extremly hot conditions probably accts for that.

i just went thru a 100mph hurricane last night with some damage to the house and grounds that i have to address so pics will have to wait.

 

By all means, take care of business. I hope the jeep didn't get hurt! I've lived thru several myself and they are no picnic, especially at sea! I rode thru one that took a 40,000 ton aircraft carrier and tossed it around like a cork.

 

it was supposed to be a tropical storm w/ 45 mph winds that was going to miss up by 20 miles ... usual sort of thing , no big deal and all the track and data supported it so nobody really took it seriously. then just about the time everybody was saying ... " see? that wasn't so bad ", it turned abrubtly , turned into a strong cat 1 hurricane and drove right over us. 50 boats on the lagoon sunk, lot of people dead , LOTS of wind damage ...nobody really prepared i lost 12 solar panels with three in the pool and the usual monster clean up... all the cars survived which is good because a rock the size of a vw ened up in my driveway 4 feet behind the landrover defender...

 

Funny, that's precisely what happened to us. All the weather data suggested to storm would miss us so we didn't have to abandon our planned exercise, but at the last second, she turned right into your path. At least we had time to secure the aircraft and equipment. One of our destroyers lost her steering and almost swamped, but she saved herself. There was a movie made about that incident called "The Perfect Storm", but we weren't mentioned in it. It was very unusual for a hurricane to come that far north and be reinforced by a "Noreaster" at the same time.