Jeep Mishap Saga Continues

Hmm, think the Jeep is trying to tell me something.

Having enjoyed a long weekend in the Welsh Borders, driving up and around Herefordshire, Brecon Beacons and Wye Valley, returned on Monday afternoon. Dropped off friends and their luggage, about 5 miles from home. Small amount of smoke from front pad, which is odd as I hadn't been caning the car.

Drove off from their place and the front brakes were dragging, which is not a good thing. Decided to take the slower route home, but it seemed to be getting worse as the pads and discs heated up. Pulled into a side road, tried harsh on/off use of the brakes, in forward and reverse direction. That didn't free them up. Then went into a petrol station (parked in a bay, not by a fuel pump) and had a short break. Even decided to use the car wash - the car was filthy after all, and I thought it couldn't hurt to cool the brakes a bit more directly before going the final couple of miles home.

Came out of there with a cleaner car, no issues with water on the (partially cooled) brakes, but they remained stuck on. Enough for the Jeep to wheelspin the rear tyres when pulling out, before the all-wheel-drive diffs did their stuff. Extra friction was making the car really sluggish and gave the recently rebuild auto box and torque converter a bit more than usual to do in the sub-30mph traffic.

Got home, but of course by then the front brakes were really hot, smoke pouring off the pads once stationery. Unloaded the back of the car, called Namco to arrange remedial work and continued with my evening (preparing for work in Ipswich for the next few days, thrilling eh?).

Car was booked in for treatment and Billy did his usual good stuff. Turned out that the extreme heat had all but melted the seals in the calipers. New calipers required from the Jeep Chrysler dealer then (repair kits not an option), which meant a delay of a few days.

That stuffed up my plans for the end of the week, when I was intending to use the Jeep to tow the Stratos kit to Brands Hatch for a track day on the Friday. For that, I needed to pick up a rented trailer on the Thursday. With the Jeep unavailable until at least Friday afternoon, that meant I wasn't going to be towing the kit this time round, and instead needed to drive the car there (and back). Not much fun driving the Strat on the M25, but my main concern was with the weather. Looked like rain, for which I have a great set of wet weather Michelin racers, but they aren't road legal and you cannot even fit one full-size spare wheel in the Strat. So that meant sticking to the Toyo R888 'track day specials' for road and track. But I guess that's a topic for a further post.

Glad to say, Namco fixed the Jeep and it was collected on Saturday morning. Brakes work fine, and more importantly, they have an off mode as well as an on mode!

Seems that there have been a number of faults with the front brakes on the WJ Grand Cherokee over the years. I had read about some of these at the wjjeeps.com web site, but much of that was about warped discs. No mention of sticking brakes, but these have done over 100,000 miles on the car. Inspection didn't show any obvious cause for them to stick, but the heat had probab;y covered up any evidence. The sliding caliper design can be prone to this, on any car, if the pins are corroded or unlubricated, but they did not seem to be a problem.

Whatever the cause, the new calipers and pads are of an updated design for the Jeep, so they are supposed to be better in some regard. So long as they can do another 100,000 miles without problem, that would be good enough for me.

As for the earlier posts about warning lights, I do get occasional warnings from the ABS lamp, when the steering has been turned a small amount. Assume that is a bad connection or perhaps a partially-broken wire. Not something I will want to pay to be investigated and as it is only intermittent I'm gonna leave it be for now.

Despite these faults, I have to say I still love driving the Jeep. It is a great soother in traffic jams, with great visibility and that easy auto box. It can also be fun on bendy sections, at much slower speeds than in a performance car. It easily copes with hills and heavy loads. And then there is still the great V8 exhaust note, which can always put a smile on my face.

You just have to forgive it when it needs work from time to time, and even then it has to be cheaper than buying a newer car to replacement. My car has had all the depreciation hit over time and now just gives more and more value. If I were to even replace it, the only real contender for me would probably be a later version of the same car. Oh, with the HO 'High Output' engine too. Then I'd have to change the exhaust and put on the stiffer springs to make it more like the current one. So why bother. I like the one I've got already, thank you very much.