I recently purchased a '97 Jeep Wrangler TJ with the 2.5L 4 cylinder engine
and manual five speed transmission. It seems in pretty good shape and runs
fine despite having 125K miles on it. One of the previous owners installed
a 2" lift kit , quick disconnect anti sway bar connectors, and big tires on
it, and it also has a loud, obnoxious muffler. The muffler is going to get
changed tomorrow.
I got this jeep mostly for winter driving and occasional messing around,
logging roads and so on. I don't (at this time) plan to do any extensive
trail driving or rock crawling. The main reason I got it is that I live in
rural Western Washington, north of Seattle and west of Everett. We don't
get a lot of snow, but we get some, and some stretches of freezing
weather. The county road up to my place has a couple of very steep spots
that have made it necessary for me to chain up my 2wd pickup just to get up
the hill. The private road to our property has a very steep downhill then
back uphill, probably twice as steep as the county road, and some people
never get up the hill when there is ice on the road. The problem is the
roads are very shaded, and any amount of snow gets pounded down to ice, and
because of the shade, it can stay on the road for days. Invariably we
will get some drizzle, too, which will freeze on top of the ice. Of
course, the County doesn't sand or de-ice our private road. My wife hasn't
had any problems getting up and down the hills in her Subaru Forrester, and
I didn't have any trouble with my Dodge 4x4 pick up from work, but I
changed jobs and they made me give the truck back. Since I already had a
new 2wd truck, another 4wd truck was out of the question, hence the Jeep
(plus I have always sort of wanted one.)
Anyone got any links to good Jeep Wrangler web sites or listservers? I
know next to nothing about these things. My brother has a built up '94 and
is quite an expert, but he's in Houston, and he doesn't do house
calls. The thing seems simple enough to work on (I spent last week
straightening out the radio and fog light wiring), not that I plan a lot of
mods. Probably the only things I can think of right now to change would be
to build some real bumpers out of heavy stock with towing padeyes welded on
to them, and maybe a receiver.
Thanks
Dave C
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