I'm looking to buy a winter beater car to get me around when there is snow and ice on the ground and I have found a 96 Jeep Cherokee for 950 bucks. It has 145k miles, 4 wheel drive and apparently no major mechanical problems but the guy is moving soon so he has to get rid of it. I know absolutely nothing about jeeps and which models were crap versus which ones were reliable so any experiences or knowledge you guys could share would be greatly appreciated. A freind of mine tells me that any Jeep with a straight 6 is good to go engine wise.

 

The I-6 engines are indestructable. Dont buy any Jeep with the weak 4cyl. Ive had 3 friends with those motors in a few diff Jeeps all with over 200+, one with 350K on that engine never even replaced a valve cover gasket.

If you give them good maintenance, and treat em right they are awesome beaters. Jeep died when they stopped making that 4.0L I6. 185hp, 220ft/lbs, its a workhorse! My friend who bought our old Grand Cherokee recently did new springs, shocks, alignment for like $700 and it drives like new. My DD is a V-8 limited GC, love it I plan on owning it for a lonngggggg time.

edit-in 200+K mile staright sixes, I have seen exhaust manifold stress cracks, and leaky intake manifold gaskets. Nothing serious, the good thing about them is they are cheap to fix.

 

950 bucks that a steel of a deal cant go wrong with a jeep of course on every car stuff breaks from wear and tear but jeeps seem to hold up good

 

i had a jeep wrangler with an inline 6 took it offroading all the time have gone through 10k in mechanical repairs none of which was on the engine. honestly you can not kill the inline 6 engine.

 

^^my friend did... DD blew a head gasket... on a Jeep Cherokee... buy the grand cherokee, regular cherokee is a piece...

 

nahhhh the grand cherokees have no offroad potential and are uglier.

the cherokees are haus. my friends HG blew at 290k.. even then it is still a super easy fix as these motors are super easy to work on.

 

do it....do it now

 

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you do not seriously buy it let me know!!!!!

i have a 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee (you can peep pictures on my facebook Russel under the album "chromin") and seriously, it will...NOT..DIE. inline 6 with 242,000 miles, same engine. the only thing ive gone through on that car is 4 sets of tires (i like burn out in it with cheapppp tires) and a fuel pump. the power steering is gone on mine but thats because of a leak from too much jumping around

get it!!!

 

go with the jeep, they are pretty hard to break..and thats a deal

I had a 2000 GC with the inline 6 and had no major problems with it except for the rotors warping.... besides that it was great, and I beat it up off road a few times..

Now I have a 2002 GC special edition with the I-6, its has 100K+ miles on it now and it runs very well




eh I beat up my GC plenty of times off road, and went with ppl that had regular cherokees, and I hung with them.... looks are subjective but I would take a GC over a regualar cherokee any day...

now if you plan on modding it and getting super serious off road then yea go with the regular cherokee...( I would buy a wrangler though )

 

Your wrong about that... Grand Cherokees do have off road potential. As in everything its all about the person building the vehicle.

 

Russ one thing you need to do is have it checked over first for state inspection issues that could make that $950 price skyrocket.