Newjeepowner88

So i mostly wanna know y'alls opinion on a car trade i made. I don't know much about jeeps. I traded my 97 camry for a 94 jeep a week ago. The camry has 202000 miles, needed new boots and axles, and was sort of rough cosmetically. This jeep i now own has an oil leak. It was overheating at first but we found out that some stupid person who put the motor in it broke a fan off and didn't replace it so at first it was overheating when it was idle. We fixed that though, a mechanic said the engine sounds good and everything else is working great. I think it was a good trade. But my husband doesn't agree. What do y'all think based off the information i've provided?

no rdplz

First of all, you went from foreign to American - good job! Keep the money here (yes, Toyota has plants here but the money goes to Japan. You buy Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Hyundai, whatever, it's not American if the company isn't here). Second, you went from a Toilet (Toyota) to a Jeep - great job! Jeeps are known for having oil leaks but they can be fixed and they are amazing vehicles. Most leaks come from the valve cover and it drips down, but check to make sure that's where it's coming from. If it is coming from the cover, it's an easy fix - take off the cover, clean it up and the engine surface real well, put a new gasket on with some RTV blue, put the cover back on, let it seal up, and you're good to go. If that's not where it's at, clean the engine really well, let it run, and see where the leak is coming from. At that point, fix it if it really needs to be. Otherwise, just add some oil when needed.
In any case, it seems to be a good trade just in the fact that you went American. I'm not brand loyal (my family is pure GM and I have a Jeep), but I am American loyal.

Newjeepowner88

lol thanks. The mechanic said something along the same lines as what you just said about the oil leak so we'll probably try to fix that soon. It's also burning oil. I also have to weld the passengers side door back on cause its halfway off lol, and its actually stuck now. You can't open it from the inside or outside. It runs great, drives great, because its older and has so many miles on the body you bounce all over the place and get jerked around a little while driving it lol. But thats another reason why i love it.

builtnotbought89'

First off welcome to the site!!!

Not only did you go with a US made truck, but the odds are that your camry was on its way to the bone yard! This XJ (cherokee) just had a motor put in (new?), that if taken good care of will last you 400k+ miles!!!

Another small flaw with the cherokee is that the welds break on the door hinges! Also as far as the oil leak goes if its not the valve cover its gonna be the rear main seal...

Newjeepowner88

Yea we discovered the hinge problems, they used to weld them onto the jeeps frame and the doors are so heavy that after a while they wear out and break. The drivers side was welded back on at some point but they bent the metal at the door there doing it. I'm gonna take more pictures of it in a few hours. The headliner is also gone, but the inside looks fantastic for its age. No holes or stains on the seats, the dashboard looks amazing. The motor was taken from a junk yard and put in by the previous owner but he said he didn't know how many miles were on it but it was rebuilt before it was put into the jeep. But i'm trying to find out as much as i can about jeeps so i can understand it better. So thank y'all

superj

i think you did ok also because you have more room in the jeep. my mom had a 97 for a while and it was an ok car but hte seats were uncomfortable and parts/repairs were expensive.

i would need to see the vehicles next to each other to tell you if the trade was good or not but if you are happy and the truck runs ok, then its good for you.

my wife is happier with jeeps then cars because of the room and the fact they are higher up for bad weather. plus, when our 93 grand got rear ended, if we had been in a smaller car, like our 318 bmw or your toyota, we might have been alot worse off then we ended up being.

jeepkid03

I think its a good trade. Cherokees will have those small issues that bug you. These include door hinges, oil leaks, squeaks, rattles, rear hatch struts. Annoying little things like that. The drivetrain is bullet proof though, especially since yours has been rebuilt. Its very common to see Jeeps go well over 200K miles. Many have even reported 500K and 600K miles with only regular maintenence.

Only two things will kill a cherokee. Rust, and lack of care. If you keep the fluids changed at the correct intervals, the motor will outlast the body. Spray some undercoating on the underbody and some bedliner on the rocker panels and you can plan on driving it forever.

Newjeepowner88

Thank you for the tips! Mine has all those annoyances except the rear hatch struts lol. No rust, needs an oil change BAD though. I'm going to jump on that immediately : )

superj

you'll love it more the longer you have it. cherokees are very agile vehicles with lots of fun power in a useable range. my wife's old (we owned a while ago) 95 2 wheel drive was so much fun because you could turn around on a 2 lane street and beat all the local street racers light to light with the kids in the back. tons of room on trips, drove two of our jeeps to north carolina from south texas a couple times, its 23 hours of driving, not 23 hours if you sleep, thats stright driving. never had an issue in either of them during those times or any of hte times we owned them. drove them to brownsville, a 2 hour trip regularly. never should've sold that 95. i have an 87 now because we bought a liberty and its definitely not a cherokee, like i had hoped. the 87 is making its way quickly up the ladder of enjoyable vehicles that can stay for a while.

ColoradoXJ88

I think you cloned my jeep....88, leaks oil, passenger door was stuck, headliner gone, traded a small car for it. As for getting the passenger door open, i'll snap some pics and tell you what i did to get mine open. It magically fixed itself (kinda) once i got it open. there's a trick to closing it though.

Tural

Welcome to the forum. there's a really long thread called "You know you drive an XJ when". i would recommend you read that thread. as funny as it is, it will tell you every common problem an XJ owner goes through. you will see that none of them are life threatening . Cherokees are tough little trucks and they outperform every vehicle in their price range and a lot of'em above their price range. i think you won that deal.

ColoradoXJ88

So if your door is stuck like this:


Like mine was, then here's what i did, and what you might wanna look into. If you look in the crack, you can see the door lock thing. Mine was stuck so that no matter how hard i tried, i couldn't get the thing to budge with the door handle. So, after taking off the interior trim piece and messing around for a few hours with one of my buddies, we discovered that thing that was holding it in place was this little tab-looking thing that was at the top of the door lock.
Here's the best pic i could get with the screwdriver pointing to it:


So, we got a couple of flat-head screwdrivers and while i pushed the tab up, he pushed the latch down, and we got it open.
Different pic where you can see the latch, and the screwdriver pointing to a barely-visible metal tab.


Once we closed it and did this a few more times, we discovered that you have to push the latch down by hand, and then slam the door shut if you want it to open with the handle the next time you open the door. I've always had to reset the latch by hand every time i opened that door from then on, but I'm hoping that getting my hinges welded will help with this problem.

This is where i push the latch down to now and slam it closed so it'll open again.


I hope this helps you!! It was a PAIN for me to figure it all out!!