Hi All,

My 15 year old son, Jake, just bought his first Jeep, a 1994 Cherokee Sport.
Jake was 5 or 6 when he attended his first Jeep convention up in Leadville, CO. I am excited for him to catch Jeep fever!

(My wife & I have been driving GC's since 1994 and have owned a 94, 96, and still own a 97 GC) .

We have many questions and requests for help from you:

1. The Cherokee Sport he bought has a lot of rust around the driver door handle and a number of small dents on the door. We would prefer to change the door out but do not know where to go to find either a used or new one. Any suggestions on fair priced place to find external body parts? What should we expect to pay?

(Where we live in central Nebraska there are not many junk yards and the one I have access to wanted $300 for a used GC front bumper.)

2. Driver side passenger door opens very hard and takes two thumbs to press the handle button. What is easiest way to resolve this? What needs to be replaced? Lubricant does not do the trick. Lock is also marginal.

3. Can I buy an owners manual anywhere besides at the stealership?

4. Where can I buy door jam seals?

4. Left engine fan shroud has broken the top off, exposing the fan blade...is this a normal thing on Cherokees and is there an after market repair or replacement site I can go to?

5. Engine with 144K miles appears very strong, starts very easily (coldest day so far is low 20's), does not smoke, is fairly quiet, auto tranny shifts smoothly up and down, 4 wd engages easily in 4Hi and 4lo; at 75 MPH the truck runs very smooth and does not hop all over the place or vibrate/shake. Brakes stop the vehicle smoothly and quickly.

HERE IS MY CONCERN: When coming to a stop the Jeep slows smoothly until you are totally stopped and then it feels like there is a backlash of some type where the drivetrain feels like it is in a forward/ upward motion and then drops or rebounds you back into the seat. Kind of like when you have loose seat brackets (which are tight).

I am fairly certain that something in the drivetrain must be loose or broken such as some mounting bracket somewhere. It almost has the feel of a broken motor mount when accelerating and letting off with a broken motor mount only the Jeep does not do it when starting out, just after coming to a stop. Any ideas or suggestions?

This truck was definitely an outdoor vehicle it's whole life and does have some surface rust in a few spots and a little worse rust above windshield that I have knocked off and temporarily painted. We plan on repainting the truck later this summer depending on how well sonny boy takes care of the vehicle between now and then.

Sorry this is so long and thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Mike and Jake McCann Kearney, NE
www.buykearney.com

There seems to be an Advance auto in near where you live. They can order a new door handle for both sides and when you pull the old one off sand down all the rust and primer it to prevent it from rusting up again. They can also order a new set of door lock cylinders for both front doors and a new door lock kit for the passenger side as that is probably what is causing the problem with opening. An owners manual can probably only be gotten at the dealership but won't do much good when it comes to working on the jeep best to get a haynes, chilton's, or FSM for him so when repairs are needed it shows how to do it yourself. If it's the mechanical fan shroud then you will probably have to get that from a junkyard if it's the electric fan shroud get a new fan assembly from advance for it. They can also order the weatherstripping for the doors for 1 door at a time to replace them. As far as the rebounding when coming to a stop check the seat while sitting still and see if you can rock back and fourth a little bit in the seat. If it's been an outside vehicle you can pretty much guarantee that they took it offroad. The reason I say check the seat is that on my 92 sport all the bolts are tight but you can still rock back and fourth in it and that is because there is a cross bar on the frame of the seat that attaches to the sliding mechanism and where it is welded to the seat frame it broke free allowing it to move freely. It can only be seen by sliding the seat all the way forward and removing it then flipping it over and removing the sliding mechanism from the seat frame and it will be evident if that is the case. As for the dents just get a dent puller like you see on tv where they hot glue the suction cup to the middle of the dent and pop it out, or if it's a big dent in the middle of the door use the old plunger trick (used it on a couple of the dents on my doors and worked perfectly).

HERE IS MY CONCERN: When coming to a stop the Jeep slows smoothly until you are totally stopped and then it feels like there is a backlash of some type where the drivetrain feels like it is in a forward/ upward motion and then drops or rebounds you back into the seat. Kind of like when you have loose seat brackets (which are tight).

I am fairly certain that something in the drivetrain must be loose or broken such as some mounting bracket somewhere. It almost has the feel of a broken motor mount when accelerating and letting off with a broken motor mount only the Jeep does not do it when starting out, just after coming to a stop. Any ideas or suggestions?www.buykearney.com

check the trany mount and the motor mounts and open both diffs and check to make sure everything is tight in there.

Thanks guys!

Yeah there is an Advanced Auto and I do business there so we will head down there and see what we can come up with. Thanks for the great advice. We will check out what you both suggest.

Another quick question: I took it to the grocery store a few minutes ago and while loading groceries, I realized that I/we do not know where the jack & handle are/goes. Can you give me a headsup?

Thanks again. Mike and Jake McCann

Look under the back seat.

Thanks Jeepme...

My last question should probably be filed under DUH. That is where it is on the GC. My son vacuumed in there but never told me the jack was in there...but then again I never asked him either. The jack actually looks like it has never been on the ground and same goes for the donut tire.

Mike

I am in casper wy. I'll sell you my GC if you wanna come get it. It has a completely rebuilt tranny with about 200 miles on it. I just bought a JY engine for it with 80k miles and it needs installed. The truck has no rust. You can have it for the price of the tranny. $2500.

Hi All,

Wow! Jake and I took his "new" Cherokee out in the snow storm this weekend and after he learned a few dos and don'ts in driving in deep snow, we had a lot of fun. Let me say that he had to back up a couple of times but we never had to get the snow shovel out.

I am not sure our 97 GC or 02 Yukon XL would have went through some of what we did with the Cherokee last night...(or maybe I wouldn't have because of the fragile plastic front bumpers/valances on both of them).

Anyway...threw the 10year old daughter in with us for our second fun run. Neighbors said the side street was 4 foot deep and nothing was getting through there...sounded like a challenge...when we hit the first drift my daughter said she almost hit the ceiling even with her seat belt on. Wife wasn't very happy we were out tearing around..but then again...someone has to remain sane!

Oh yeah...I think they were surprised when we stopped behind their house and flashed the brights in there patio windows!! :)

We ended up with about 24 inches of snow with drifts up past the windows in our neighborhood!!

I definitely know which Jeep we are hunting in next fall unless sonny boy figures out a way to wreck it before then.

Thanks for the offer Douge36, but he already bought a 94 Cherokee.

I think it is probably more than enough to get himself into trouble with!

Gotta go...sonny boy thinks we should go see if they have all the streets cleaned off yet....Mike

For any used auto body or mechanical parts, I use a web-site I found when I sold used parts for a salvage yard.

www.car-part.com it's important to put the hyphen between car and part. Best of luck

Thanks Nascarmechanic.

Now I know they are out there on that site. Lot of stuff there! Going to that site helped me as well in learning that I should be using the word salvage in some of my searches.

Thanks again...Mike

i would also suggest looking in the salvage yard for that door it can save you a ton of $$$$$ i just saved almost $500-$600 by getting some new parts from one of these.