Jeep Tilt End

I think I might be about to get over the Jeep Tilt finally.

The Jeep first started having a problem with cutting out and dieing in January. The engine would shut off suddenly sometimes for just a second but then right back on and sometimes off until I could coast to the side, sit for a minute and then restart. I took it to a shop that we have come to really like and trust with the cars. They had it for a week, but it did not show the problem. The vague error code from the engine diagnostic could mean one of several components was bad. Instead of guessing what it was we decided I would drive it until it failed completely or got bad enough that it was likely to exhibit the problem for the mechanics.

It looked like that day finally came the night of CC’s home game. Of course, as soon as the tow dropped the Jeep at the shop I was able to start it up without a problem and park it.

The guys at the shop kept it for a few more days without it giving them the same trouble. They still thought the it could be one of three things: fuel pump, crank shaft sensor, or cam shaft sensor. I really did not want to drive it more waiting for it to fail again at the worst possible time. I wanted to take the best shot at the problem and see if it could be fixed. We decided that of the three top things that might be causing it, the fuel pump was the most likely and replaced that.

One day after I picked it up, it shut off while Nelson and I were making a trip to Home Depot. Grrrr.

So back to the shop. This time I told them to drive it as much as they could, use it as the shop truck to get parts, go to lunch, whatever. After two weeks of them using it every day in some way, it shut finally off when the Big Guy at the shop was making a run to the nearby mall during lunch. It started back up for him and got back to the shop without needing a tow. He started and let it run in shop to see what was up and it shut off after about 10 minutes. This kept up long enough for him to get confident that it was the crankshaft sensor causing the problem. He replaced that and left the Jeep running for over 3 hours without a problem. He drove it for the rest of the day without a problem.

It now has a new fuel pump that might not have been really necessary, but was not too expensive ($300) and the old one had 12 years and 270k miles on it. The crankshaft sensor is replaced at about $100, but the shop did not charge any labor for that, so that’s a deal. I would not mind getting about 250K miles out of it, but I am not sure that’s going to happen.

The Jeep has been running without a problem for a couple of days. If it keeps up, then I will be truly over the Jeep Tilt.

Imported from an old blog. Some links might be dead. Let me know if you find dead links.