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Hi everyone.
Below I have addressed all the comments so far till August 22. That you all very much. I have enjoyed writing to you – once. Doing it the second time was not so much fun.
CRASH486
Hi Crash No, I can't really pick up a donor car cheap cause I live in Darwin and it is a small market. Trucking one up from down south would be a dollar killer. And I have nil experience with auto electrics. This is why I am thinking of going to a pro.
EKSJAY
Hi Eksjay. Why wouldn’t you get a diesel? It it the big end worry that has appeared? I will get another diesel for several reasons:
(1) It is a great little motor. I love the sound of it at low speeds and love the performance characteristics. I hired a petrol Wrangler out of Cairns for a week some years ago. I found the motor unremarkable.
(2) If I end up keeping this car for spares – it is better that I get a diesel as all of the parts would be interchangeable. Also, the electrics in another diesel would be identical – but if I got a petrol they would be different.
(3) I asked my friendly local dealership head mechanic which engine I should get? (We have got to be mates over the years.) He put it this way: If I am going to be using the car as a daily driver, commuting to work and driving in town all the time – get a petrol. He said if I am going to spend a lot of time out bush driving on back tracks and getting through difficult bush conditions – get the diesel. He had described just what I do. I am a retiree and my main use for the car is off road. I live on a hobby farm 45 minutes out of Darwin. I rarely take the Jeep to town. We have a sensible car for that. My frequent use is to throw the dogs in the back, roof off and head down the numerous little back tracks around the Adelaide River floodplain. Here I can cruise around the billabongs, driving though occasional dry creek crossings, through deep, dry sand patches and tiptoe across soft wet spots. The engine does all this without raising a sweat. The dogs get annoyed at times because steep dry creek crossings see them rolling down forward between the gap in the seats on the way down to the creek bed, then they roll down backwards to crash into the tailgate when I drive up the other side! The torque on the engine means that you can do this at not much more than idle speed. With this engine I know that I can go anywhere that any other tricked up 4WD has been – (but I don’t do water crossings – because this car is pretty much stock standard. It even has the original tyres from new on it. 78,000 klms, 10 years old and still going. My Land Cruises only ever got about half of that! I even go exploring tracks made by quads and side by side buggies. I get startled looks from quad boys when I (an aging pensioner with 2 dopey dogs) turns up amongst them in Jeep, at their ‘secret’, lost billabong spot.
I am not a stranger to this kind of driving because I was a Chief Ranger in Kakadu for 30 years. But always in Tojos
So that is why I am getting another diesel.
The argument against cutting my losses and selling it are complex. As I indicated in my original post, I might only get $1,000 for the car that is normally worth about $20,000 - according to carsales.com. (Take off a bit for the dog hair!) By spending another $1,000 on an auto sparky is a bit like gambling (which I never do). I see it this way. I am buying a lottery ticket for $1,000. But I have inside knowledge that of all the tickets on sale, only two are valid. One is a winner and one is not. Would you pay $1,000 dollars for a one in two chance of winning $20,000? But if you don’t buy the ticket - you will lose $20,000 anyway. Tricky isn’t it?
JOE98 Hi Joe. I reckon I improved the look of the car with a subtle paint job. Did you pick that up. I have never seen another like it. I hated that big, slab-sided look of the doors on the JK. So I mimicked the ‘look’ of the TJ Wranglers by using a flat black rubber spray paint on the doors and window frames. The rubber paint can be pulled off or touched up over time. I did it about ten years ago – so it has worn well.
“Has an electrician looked at the wiring?” I think the honest answer is ‘no’. Even though the car has had dealership mechanics crawling through it for two years, it is probable that none of them were experienced auto sparkies. There is no substitute for hard won experience in comparison to just plugging in a scanning tool. My bet is that a well established and experienced, independent sparky is likely to be better than those in a dealership. I will probably get a caning for saying that!!
NANOOK. Hi Nanook. It is not easy to just “buy another one” in Darwin. And trucking a wreck up here would cost an arm and a leg – and then find that the loom is damaged!! I know nothing about auto sparks myself, so I have to go to a specialist. In the same way that you would if you had some weird illness. But the dealerships should be specialists as they have the most powerful diagnostics. And they have a worldwide reporting system whereby weird problems anywhere in the world are referred to a central diagnostic team in the factory. So who knows where that gets us??
TURISMO 07 Hi Turismo. You touch on the nub of the problem. Everything in the car is in perfect working order. Or at least it was when the problem first came up. Only in the last six months after its final stint with the dealer did other problems come up. And these are no doubt related to the original prob. Now the electrical battery charging systems don’t work. When I last drove it home (45 minutes) the battery was audibly boiling when I got there. Was a good battery – now a dead battery. The ESP light won’t go off, the ABS light won’t go off, the hand brake light won’t go off – even though the handbrake is fine.
KX STEVE Hi KX Steve. I would love to send it to Perth. If they could guarantee that they can fix it or buy the car for market value – I would not hesitate. But Jeep Kraft won’t do that I bet. The Jeep dealership in Adelaide also said that they would love to get their hands on it to see what is going on. But same problem. The cost of getting it there. Anyway, I am not sure that they would be any better than the Darwin dealership as they all use the same diagnostics. FCA in Melbourne sent a high tech diagnostic tool to Darwin just for my car. It is a device so expensive that dealerships can’t afford to buy one. FCA Melbourne have the only one in Aus. After it looked at my car the dealership had to send it straight back to Victoria so that it can be deployed elsewhere around the nation. But it failed to find anything significant with my car.
BAGNKAT Hi Bagnkat, If you have read this post so far, most of your comments are addressed. As for what codes are being thrown – all of them are I think! The wiring experts in Darwin told me that the loom wires run on 5 volts. They reckon that if a wire had been cut - that it would be traceable. But if two or more wires had had the insulation damaged and the bare wires are touching – that is a whole different ball game. But they can slowly and painstakingly test every wire – at great cost. This is most likely what will have to happen.
Thanks for the Facebook link. I don’t do Facebook but my wife does. I will get her to call it up for a look.
JAFFAZOOM Hi Jaffazoom, The good news is that the head mechanic at the dealership has said that he will provide all possible assistance to an independent auto sparky. They are only a few city blocks away from each other. So far I have a 24 page book listing all the work and tests that have been done so far. Earlier this year the dealership had a diesel sport for sale. So they parked it next to mine and swapped over as many parts as they realistically could – but nothing worked.
BANSHEE Hi Banshee, Yes, my wife has pointed this out to me as well. This is written on Word and cut and pasted.
Thanks everyone for your contributions. Sorry that this has been so long – but if you suffer from insomnia – this is just what you need.
So far, none of you have put up a convincing argument not to go down the independent and experienced auto-sparky road. If it fails to work out – you might hear a lot from me offering a whole car for sale as spares!!
I will keep you posted.
Slick
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Slickturtle
Humpty Doo NT
Shocking yellow, Sport CRD not quite standard
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