High Mileage YJs

[UncleChris]

What should one look for in a high mileage YJ?

I know that the Cherokees run forever, but is a high mileage(~150k miles) one worth looking at? Any gotchas, things to stay away from?

[blaze one]

I am looking at a few YJ's myself , I believe that the 4.0L engine is just a reliable in the Cherokee as the YJ . I don't know much about the earlier 4 banger though .
I would love to find a nice clean , unabused YJ around here to replace my Blazer , but they are hard to come by .

[UncleChris]

They seem to hold their value more than the Cherokees. I have found some XJs with an asking price of $1500 (with about 200k on the clock). I found one YJ for 3k that needed engine work, and others seem to hover around $5k(80k-130k.)

As a main vehicle, they are kind of limited by space. You cannot carry much. I also do not know how available AC is.

The 4.0 is the same as the XJ, as is the 4.0 in the TJ. I am not sure about the trannies though. I know that Jeep put out some questionable trannies in the 80s(the peugot).

A thing to take note is that in the Automatic Cherokees you cannot lock the tranny into 1st for crawling(unless you do some rewiring). Does anyone know if this is the case for the YJ Auto as well?

Good luck in your hunt!

[Scott Brady]

My Jeep has 140,000+ on it and runs fantastic. The water pump failed (I should have caught it), but that is all the repairs I have had to do.

[UncleChris]

My Jeep has 140,000+ on it and runs fantastic. The water pump failed (I should have caught it), but that is all the repairs I have had to do.

Good to hear! Thanks for the info.

Sounds like it will have even more miles on it once you're done with it.

[elcoyote]

I bought my Comanche MJ (basically an XJ pick-up) with a 4.0 brand new in 1992, it has about 340,000 miles on it. Rebuilt the motor, full long block at 230,000 because I was getting a little bit of valve noise. Put a super charger on it aroung 300,000. The tranny is the original 5 speed AX-15, never been opened up. I replaced the transfer case the chain around 280,000 because it seemed like the thing to do but I was surprised to see that it had only stretched about 1/8". All in all, I would have to say that it has been a rock solid daily driver, expedition vehicle and occasional competion vehicle for a faithful 15 years. The 4.0 high output engine and AX-15 combo has never let me down.

[Cowboy]

I just turned 250,000 miles on my YJ last month while exploring the Pa Grand Canyon. The only problem that all 4.0 HO's seem to get is the cracked exhaust manifold.