Totaled TJ thinking of replacing with JK

Rick1981

Rick1981

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Supporting Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2022
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6
Location
Mooresville, Indiana
Last month I was hit causing me to flip a few times. I bought my TJ back and am leaning towards making it an off-road only unit. I still want a Jeep to drive and was thinking of going with a JK 2012 or so to have the 3.6. I’m sure plenty of folks here have both so just looking for some feedback.

E934619D-42D7-46DC-AB73-D3E04F96FFA5.jpeg
 
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My thoughts;
Buy it back as a fraction of the claim, spend a lot of $ to build it up, and when you get tired of it or go another direction, you can't sell it because it has a reconstructed title.
 
Why not buy a clapped out TJ and swap everything over? Best of both worlds imo.

Move all your mods over and probably only into the swap frame/tub few thousand bucks. Can probably resell some parts you don’t need and recoup $$$.

Get to redo all the things that sucked first time around
 
If looking at a JK, the best years are 2015-2017.

2012-2013 have potential cylinder head issues that are very costly to repair and all of them are out of warranty now. Jeep extended the cylinder head warranty to 10 years/150k miles. The cylinder head issue has also appeared on a few 2014s.

Late 2013 - 2014 had an issue with the oil cooler that could potentially crack and dump all your oil down the back of the engine in seconds. The oil cooler was redesigned in 2013 to make it compatible with the smaller 3.2 Pentastar that was used in the Cherokee. Finally resolved after the 6th or 7th revision for the 2015 model year.

2018 JK had an issue with the solenoid pack in the transmission valve body that would cause a no start problem. Fix was replacing the solenoid pack.

ALL years of the JK have the potential issue of casting sand in the cooling system. I bought a new 2017 and it had a layer of sludge in the coolant reservoir at 10k miles.

I don't know if they ever fixed the 6 speed manual popping out of gear issue.

The 5 speed automatic in them is a good transmission, excepting the 2018 problem.

Plenty of people have no issues with their JK, and there are also plenty of people that do.

Do your research and inspect potential purchases carefully.
 
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We have both and enjoy each of them, but I admit I find myself in the JK more and more.

I don’t have to sell anyone here on the TJ. The JK is an auto and I like it the more I drive it. And I am talking about on the trails, I wish I would have done it long ago. So maybe that is the big draw, that or the A/C …I’m not sure. :ROFLMAO:
 
Looks banged up pretty good. Your ideas are good, if you want a trail jeep and agree a JK auto is good if you want a Jeep as second vehicle. Truck to pull TJ or trailer too ?? Before long you have 6 vehicles like me.
 
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