She's gone...

Well I had an opportunity to buy a much more reliable vehicle but it came at a price.
I bought a 2003 Dodge Ram 2500 w/Cummins diesel and 6 speed manual 4x4 truck that only had 44,000 verified miles on the truck for $20,000

It was time to say goodbye to my XJ, so I gave her to my sister in law who needed a vehicle and someone who could work on it.

I grew up in that XJ by sending many hours traveling in the back with my grandparents, then driving my family around in it. It was a hard decision but on the bright side I'll still get to cuss at it and throw tools out of the garage after I bust my knuckles on it! :roflmao:

and for the record I gave up my Jeep to buy a Cummins... it just came wrapped in a Dodge.

Hmmm.., lol. Well be sure to have say..; a Raycor clear-sight diesel fuel water separator, (often used for marine diesel powered vessels), commonly a type of pre-filter installed on the firewall. Be sure to make an eye-ball look-see check daily for either water, or algae before starting up. Long story short; Fueled up, drove 150 round trip perfectly. Next morning started up, and wham, bam, bam, bam. Engine got puked from algae plugging up the the filters.., and upon start-up the compression sucked the water out of the algae cells, and killed the diesel engine. Had I maintained my usual routine of checking under the hood; oil, anti-freeze checks, loose parts, etc., before starting I would have noticed the issue, and probably would have prevented destruction.., but...

One can never be certain that there is not an algae bloom in a diesel fuel station tank, nor for that matter water, and same goes for gasoline storage tanks with water issues. Diesels are great engines.., ok, but I'll never get one again as I can no longer trust diesel fuel storage depots, and as remarked, easy to kill the engine by squeezing water out of a cup of algae. I think something like a couple of ounces of water did the engine in. Couple of ounces, or more water in a gasoline engine is not only easily remedied, but won't kill the gas engine.

Be careful, i.e., make a daily inspection before starting up.

Anyways.., happy trails.

Btw: Heard that the Dodge product has over twenty different transmissions. Heard too that one model has a Mercedes which is the best. Might want to look into that as there seems to be a problem perhaps... Might want to identify yours, and pull one out of a junk yard as a spare replacement for your rig. What's true.., lol, I have no clue.

Should be 47re or a 48re, can't think of the Mercedes transmission, I know a ton of Chrysler Plymouths along with one of our jeeps use Mercedes transmission.

Nice truck btw


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6 Speed Manual should be an NV5600. Good stuff.

I think that 24V precedes the DEF requirements.

Take care of that truck and it will probably just go up in value. It probably has more going for it than anything you could go out and purchase new today. And it will probably get about 20mpg. Good luck finding a gas engine with any torque that can come close to that.

Alaskan89XJ said:

Btw: Heard that the Dodge product has over twenty different transmissions. Heard too that one model has a Mercedes which is the best. Might want to look into that as there seems to be a problem perhaps... Might want to identify yours, and pull one out of a junk yard as a spare replacement for your rig. What's true.., lol, I have no clue.

Click to expand...

Quite the opposite, in fact. That would be the aluminum-case Benz G56 that replaced the cast-iron case NV5600. They have a nasty habit of flexing the aluminum cases, especially when towing/under heavy loads. That causes the gears to come out of alignment and then interesting things happen. Because hey, if it works great for our European customers, it'll work great for our American customers, right? F***ing Daimler-Benz... You can still get the Grenade56 behind the 6.7 Cummins, but the output of the engine is turned way down. But that's six of one and a half dozen of the other...

Yup g56 is garbage, and came with an even crappier dual mass flywheel. Best thing you can do for the truck is put a fass fuel pump on it before the factory lift pump fails. Better quality of fuel will make your injectors last so much longer. Good choice tho, the 5.9 was a great motor.