Well, I've got to say that having owned this for about 2 months, my faith in the human race has taken a beating. Why do people feel the need to misrepresent the truth?
The previous owner off the TJ told me it had a new heavy duty clutch in it about 2 years ago, but has only completed about 20,000km, so should be good. Well after driving it the 600km home and discovering a pretty solid clutch shudder and then eventually the failure of the throw out bearing. The clutch was out of adjustment and was right on the top. I'm guessing the throw out bearing was never disengaging and 6 odd hours of 100km/hr sorted it out. Any way pulled the clutch out to have a look and woe and behold there s a brass button clutch in there (why??) that is worn down to the rivets. That dosen't happen in 20,000km. So new clutch and machined flywheel later and it's good as new.
2nd issue. The rear axle was fully rebuilt apparently, but had a twisted spline. Well this turned out to be a bent axle. Also had a leaking pinion seal which upon further investigation was due to a groove being warn in the yoke. This doesn't happen overnight. So looking further and pulling the rear diff cover off I find teeth missing on the crown wheel, but no bits in the bottom of the diff, so it had been cleaned out and reassembled like this. WTF!! So I fill it with oil and decide to just keep driving it to failure and worry about it then. Well one trip later the pinion bearing lets go. Take it to a diff shop who strips it to find most of the bearings are buggered and bearings have spun in the locker and mangled the housing. So now it's getting a new locker, crown wheel, pinion, yoke, seals, and full set of bearings. So much for a complete rebuild. While its there they'll adjust the pinion angle as its way out. Rear shocks also hit the bottom of the spring carrier and have pretty heavily dented the shock. This I saw and have added to the "to do" list.
Oh and the front pinion bearing is also leaking, but it can just continue to leak, I'm not in the mood to see what's in there. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
Oh yeah, it also came with a rebuilt steering pump and steering box, well now it won't steer at idle, needs 12-1300rpm to steer, so something else to fix when it gets back from the diff shop. Again so much for "just been rebuilt"!
When I picked it up it was running internal bead locks. I was told that 1 of the rims had no tube in it as it had a puncher. The TJ also came with a new set of rims. I agonised a lot over getting another tube and running the internal bead locks or just putting the new rims on. In the end I decided to go with the new rims. Good choice, as when the tyre shop stripped the old tyres off only ONE other rim had a tube in it, so 3 rims were missing tubes!!!
Oh yeah, the custom exhaust, is just a standard exhaust with a simple sports muffler in it, hardly custom. Not really concerned by this, but just more misreprentation.
It really pisses me off, that people mislead you like this. PS it's got an Ausjeepoffroad.com.au sticker on the back of it, so unfortunately it's come from someone on here....
I do really enjoy the TJ, but I'm pretty concerned as to what else I'm going to find that was fully rebuilt, but I suspect has just had a Dulux rebuild.
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Cheers Rod
"That's a pretty permanent solution to a temporary problem"
Last edited by Rocket55; 15-09-2016 at 11:35 PM.
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