1999 Jeep XJ

Green Machine

The Beginning

I bought my first car in April of 2017, the second semester of my sophomore year in college. I had wanted an XJ for a while, and decided fairly rapidly that this had to be the one. I remember calling my parents from my dorm room and basically getting permission to buy a vehicle, and then finding this on Craigslist later that day. I think it was located near Hunter’s Glen Lake north of Northglenn, CO.

It had everything I wanted:

  • 1999 model year- first year of new intake, worth 5 extra horsepower, and last year before the cylinder heads started cracking with the infamous 0331 castings
  • 2-door
  • 4.0l engine- why bother with the 4-cylinder
  • AX-15 manual transmission
  • Chrysler 8.25 rear axle

There were a few problems that I absolutely turned a blind eye to: the passenger rear quarter panel had a bad bondo job which was heavily flaking off, and there was a howling from the rear differential. I think the gentleman selling it wanted $3000, we negotiated down to $2700. It had about 192,300 miles when I drove it away. I remember driving it up the canyon on highway 287 back to Laramie and being astounded with how much torque it had- it held 5th gear pretty much all the way. The only manual transmission vehicle that I’d spent any time behind the wheel of was my dad’s old 2000 Subaru Outback- not exactly a torquey engine.

Repairs and Upgrades

When I got it back to Laramie, I didn’t have a parking pass and I had no intention of purchasing one for the last few months of the semester. I kept it parked a few blocks south of the dorms where roadside parking was allowed. The first thing I did to it, probably within less than a week, was replace the factory radio. Mike Wise and his friend Jay helped me- at this point I still had no idea how to do any real automotive work.

The rear differential continued to howl, and I needed to have it replaced. The two bays next door to the food truck bay that I worked at (On the Hook) was a mechanic, Tim. He was a grouchy old biker with a heart of gold. Tim was happy to replace the offending bearing for a fee. I had ordered a Aussie lunchbox locker for the rear differential, and Tim put that in for me at the same time that he replaced the worn bearing.

The engine had a bad oil leak from between the engine and transmission- the notorious rear main seal. I managed to replace it in Mike’s gravel driveway with nothing but a cheap Napa floor jack and the stock bottle jack. To get the oil pan out, I had to jack up the frame until the axle was off the ground, and then use the bottle jack to push the axle away from the frame, creating enough room to pivot the pan out. After the pan was out, I had to remove a stiffener bracket on the bottom of the engine before I could remove the rear bearing cap. One of the studs that held the stiffener bracket caught my ring finger while I was taking one of the nuts off- I still bear a gnarly scar to this day. I went through 2 rear main seals before I could slide the third in without tearing it- but it has held for almost 7 years now.

I think that was it for major repairs, though I did have a few minor ones. The oil pressure sensor has failed, the starter has failed twice (once replaced while laying in an inch of slush in the Laramie Safeway parking lot), and the bad bondo job on the passenger side continues to flake off. 

All in all, the XJ was my daily driver from 2017 to 2025, and it has been amazingly reliable. I look forward to returning to it, as it will likely become my daily when we return from our Pan-Am trip.