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Chrysler products are generally junk but everyone knows its almost impossible to kill the jeep straight 6.
almost.
for the last 3 years my sister has been driving a 2000 grand Cherokee with that workhorse engine. problem is she doesn't take care of her cars at all, and I mean AT ALL. she drives them straight into the ground. I took care of it for a brief moment for her but when she was too lazy to even wash it for 2 years I stopped bothering. she hadn't changed her oil for 50,000 miles.
these engines can really put up with a lot as long as you keep oil in them. 8 years ago I was totally broke, so broke I could barley keep the lights on. I drove a 95 Grand Cherokee for a few years that was a tired dog, but I kept up with the oil and she never let me down.
anyway my sisters jeep developed a lifter tick, which is to be expected with an engine with 262k on it, and lifter ticks are generally harmless as long as you get them delt with. well she didn't ever handle it and the tick turned into a knock. she kept driving it still, with it knocking. I asked her if she had checked her fluids and she said she had a friend do it, and that it was totally fine.
my Ls400 is down right now waiting for a new rack and I had to get to work. it was a last resort so I had to drive her jeep, which was okay cause I actually kinda missed driving an suv once in awhile. I made it to work okay but on the way home the knock got louder, and then I smelled the "death" smell and im sure most of us knows what that's like. I panicked, and pulled into a gas station. I pulled the dipstick and discovered to my horror that there was almost nothing on the dipstick!!!! and what was there was blacker than sharpie marker. so I went into the gas station slammed 4 quarts of 20w-50 into the engine so atleast it had something. poor thing was eating itself. got it home and told her she needed to start looking for a new car, or see if she could try to get it fixed. as we all know the rod knock is a death rattle for engines so I knew its days were numbered.
today unfortunately I didn't have a way to work again and had to drive her car, she told me she had got something for it and the knock went away. everyone knows knocks don't go away on there own but I reluctantly drove it. I started it up and it seemed to be doing okay actually. the knock had quieted down, oil pressure looked good and it was running smoothly.
I almost got it to work. almost.
about a block away it started knocking so bad the thing was shaking, started loosing power and BAM! oil smoke and seized engine. the jeep is dead. I called her up and broke the terrible news to her. she just shrugged it off and says, "oh well dad will get me another one who cares" and that was the end of it.
it was a nice car, just not maintained, really is sad. cars are becoming throwaway items these days. heck I was more sad than she was about it. felt bad for the thing. so yes, you can kill a jeep straight 6.
The 4.0L (258 cubic-inch) straight-six is a VERY old power plant. It goes back some 45 years, and was developed by American Motors as a big brother to the smaller 198 cubic-inch and 232-cubic-inch straight sixes. Renault and Chrysler, over the years, have both, at various times, had ownership rights to the engine from buying out American Motors. That engine ended up, of course, being used mostly in Jeeps, which was also acquired by Renault and Chrysler.
this was the 232. had a feeling it was reall old motor just revised. heck the toyta 1JZ is insanely old. the original variant was used in tractor engines back in the 40s!
Easy. Just operate it normally. Mine came with a bent crank shaft from the factory. Engine imploded at 30k. Dealer had no clue. Replaced top end and imploded again at 40k. Repeatedly fixed and imploded regularly until at 60k they tore down the engine and found the bent crank. Never again.
just tried starting it and it fired up. knocking like holy hell, smoking like a chimney and whole thing is shaking like a leaf. god damn these engines are tough.
this was the 232. had a feeling it was reall old motor just revised. heck the toyta 1JZ is insanely old. the original variant was used in tractor engines back in the 40s!
either way I feel bad for the jeep.
Yes, you're right....my bad. The 4.0 was the 232. There was also a larger 258 and smaller 199....I got the liter-size mixed up on them.
I take it that the Jeep itself (especially with a bad engine) is not worth as much on the used-car market as the cost of actually replacing the engine...if new blocks that size are still available.
My straight 6 '94 Grand Cherokee Limited had 289k miles on it before it was totaled by a Prius in 2012. It ran great and would have easily hit 300k and beyond. Engine was solid.
The only things I had to replace was the tranny at 89k, ecu, exhaust, axles, and various suspension items. The AC compressor crapped out, but who needs A/C? All in all, it was a great vehicle. Now the newer generations..........pure crap.
Yes, you're right....my bad. The 4.0 was the 232. There was also a larger 258 and smaller 199....I got the liter-size mixed up on them.
I take it that the Jeep itself (especially with a bad engine) is not worth as much on the used-car market as the cost of actually replacing the engine...if new blocks that size are still available.
262k on a 2000 Grand Cherokee that hasn't been washed in 2 years. I'm betting the car is a roach and beat to hell. Off to the junkyard to get recycled into a new Jeep.
I often wonder when cars get 10+ years old and north of 200k miles, that they die because the owner abuses/neglects the car like in this case. Usually they're on their 3rd+ owner who won't bother with oil changes, timing belt services, etc. I'm sure a lot of older Hondas are sent to the junkyard because the owner never changed the timing belt(belt breaks on one of those cars and the valves fly into the pistons, time for new engine)
I can't help but wonder if the reason for that factory-bent crank might have been intentional. Here's a story of industrial espionage a client told me back in 1980:
It seems that a large oilfield manufacturer in the US was exhibiting at an oil trade show in Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union. They'd sent a medium-sized 1200-hp drawworks - the big winch that lifts and lowers the drill string in and out of the hole - to the show (think BIG fishing reel here). As the dock crew in Baku were offloading it from the ship, they dropped it. HARD. OK, we'll cover it up with a little paint and send it along to the address on the documents.
Present-day similar drawworks
It arrived at the show and the massive machine required a little blue touch-up paint here and there, but when they hooked it up to power, the drum turned with a distinctive "whump-whump-whump" that indicated something was seriously wrong. Yeah, the drum shaft - a six foot by five inch steel axle was bent. The vendor just unplugged it and used it as a static display for the show.
After the show they packed it up to be sent back to the States for analysis. Except that it took about nine months to arrive, nothing was amiss. Flash forward a couple of years when a company service hand discovered several "Romanian" drawworks in the field in Azerbaijan that looked suspiciously like their US product - except that were painted Soviet-Army green. When run, they all made that odd "whump-whump-whump" sound first noted on the show model. A year's investigation found what happened:
It seems that the Soviets were hot on developing their oilfields, but their technology was stuck in the thirties. This American-made, state-of-the-art device was spirited out of the shipping depot after the show and disassembled for inspection. A whole set of drawings were made and a copy was machined and assembled before the original was crated up and sent back to the States.
A little investigation of these "Romanian" drawworks revealed that, as expected, the Romanian engineers had copied the American drawworks in impressive detail . . . . right down to the bent drum shaft. No, nobody believed the Romanian engineers were so stupid as to copy an obviously bent shaft, but their management system demanded an exact copy under threat of an assignment to the Gulag, so EXACT is what they got.
For years afterward, "whump-whump-whump" was the sound of hoisting and lowering the drill string in the Soviet oilfield.
I suspect she developed the dreaded flattened cam lobe issue.
I was an ASE tech for Chrysler for many years. the 4.0L had an issue where #1 lobe would actually wear flat and result in the tick/knock. from 1995 to 2003 as I recall.
if not replaced then eventually the motor goes boom.
your father ought to teach her a lesson and not replace the vehicle, make her hump it on foot or bus for awhile.
02-04-16, 06:46 AM
to kill a 4.0L Jeep straight six.
