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by a3n
3979 days ago
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I recently bought a two year old car. I was thinking of a Patriot or GC. I didn't buy it because: - Everyone that I told I was thinking about this immediately said that Jeep reliability is crap. I didn't do my own research on that, but that this is apparently a front of mind meme was disturbing. - I had recently read about the gas tank problem. It's mounted aft of the axle. You can see it if you drive just off the rear quarter of a jeep on the highway. - I also read about Chrysler's handling of the tank problem. Their solution is to mount a tow bar on the vehicle. I guess that's about the best they can do, you're not going to move the tank on an existing vehicle. - But, they aren't going to do this for all affected vehicles. Because some of them are too rusted out to accept the tow bar. This is apparently in violation of the rules: if you recall a car, you have to fix all of them. |
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The Gas Tank Thing: The Cherokee (XJ) was designed in the 1980's and the Grand Cherokee (ZJ/WJ) was based on the Cherokee (XJ) even though it debuted in 1993. Locating the gas tank behind the axle in the rear was fairly standard back then. I really can not blame Chrysler when they get defensive about it since that was how vehicles were being built in that time period. They had even switched to double walled plastic tanks by early 1990's which are much less prone to being ruptured. Adding a tow hitch can help, but only other practical solution is to toss on a skid plate.
Even the Wrangler had behind the axle mounted gas tanks through 2006. Both the Wrangler (TJ) and Cherokee (XJ) are not part of the gas tank recall even though they both could be similarly affected.