My 1984 Jeep P.O.S.

For those of you (which is damn near all of you) that don’t know, I have a 1984 Jeep Wagoneer that I "inherited" as part of my graduation present last year. When my dad gave it to me, it had been sitting in his driveway for the better part of the year with a messed-up transmission. He offered to have it fixed and give it to me. Seeing as how I didn’t have any other hope for a working vehicle, I agreed. I thought that would be all that would be wrong with it, and I had visions of four-wheeling through mountains, minefields, and the occasional strategically placed mudhole.

Once again, Mr. Naïveté rears his ugly head.

Once it came out of the shop, it ran fine, for a while. I enjoyed driving again, even though I noticed the smell of gasoline every time I parked the Jeep, and it had a tendency to backfire every time I stopped the engine. My brother suggested we give it a tune up and we did.

It helped it to run better for about a week, and then the bottom fell out. NO, not out of the Jeep, though that wouldn’t have surprised me. It all began when I tried starting the car one morning before I went to work. The Jeep has a history of being a slow starter in the mornings anyway, and I had settled into my routine of pumping the gas pedal, cranking the ignition, and inventing curse words. That’s when it locked up on me.

My brother took a look at it and told me that the starter would have to be replaced. Unfortunately, holiday bills had depleted my funds. I had to wait until New Year’s Day to pick up a new starter. We installed it and all was right with the world.

Until that night, that is. On my back home from rehearsal for a play I was in, I heard something like dirt being kicked up into my engine. Had I been four-wheeling this would not have been unusual, however I was on a paved road in downtown Augusta GA when this occurred. I finally realized that my fan belt had broken and I raced home as best I could, with my radiator overheating and my power steering stiffening up with every turn I made. My brother railed me for driving the 20 miles home without a fan belt, and the next day we got a new fan belt, put it on, and all was right with the world.

Yep, something else happened. I had started to rehearsal when I noticed that the Jeep cut off when I took a sharp right turn. I put it in neutral, restarted it and forgot about the incident until I was on my way home. A couple of blocks from my house, it happened again. I tried starting it again, but no dice this time. I managed to push it out of the road and into a parking lot, and got a ride home. The next day my brother took a look at it and told me either the solenoid or the ignition wire was out of whack. He showed me a trick to get it going again, and all was… you get the picture.

Well, even though I haven’t had any more major problems with the Jeep, I am still expecting the worst to happen any day now. Someone who looked at it when I was trying to get it out of the road pointed out to me the fact that one of my shocks was broken, and I had a missing fluid line on the drive train. My rear bumper is missing, having rusted off from all the road salt it took in its former life up north. The gas line leak is still prevalent. I have a tire that is leaking air, and manages to go flat every other day. On top of all that, the car still backfires, only now it has progressed to the point where it invariably sounds like a gunshot. If there’s anyone around when I stop my Jeep, they look at me as if I just broke wind in their faces, and I usually sink very low in my seat from embarrassment.

Yep, this is a great little car. Anyone wanna buy it, cheap?

Ó 2000, Clint McGuire