Top High Mileage Issues 1984-2001 Jeep Cherokee

In this video, we're gonna talk about what to look for on a high-mileage 2000 Jeep Cherokee 4.0 liter.

So when we talk about high-mileage vehicles, I like to say, basically, you inherited it, or you bought it used, it's a vehicle you always wanted, or, you know, you just low in money and what you got is what you get. So let's talk about proper ways to check it out real quick.

I'm gonna start from, like, driver's side and work my way around, and then I'm gonna go under the carriage. Personally, I always keep a notepad nearby when I'm doing a vehicle check for a customer. And I write important, can wait, and really can wait, like just keep it in six months in the future to do. So you can do that for yourself too, so that way it's not so much anxiety of what you have to get done and you know what's gonna happen, like you can see it. So make yourself feel better, and then you can go through the vehicle.

So I'm on the driver's side here, and I'm gonna check my fluids. So first thing I'm gonna check is my brake master. Now, this is a 2000 Jeep Cherokee. Now, I can see that this probably has never been flushed, or has been maybe a long time ago. White rag, and I'm just gonna dip that in there. And you see how that is like a brown gold where it settles right in here. And you can see in there, that's brown, that's dirt. It's pretty sad.

So what happens with brake fluid is eventually it gets moisture in it just from being around, sitting in the air. Whether the cap's on or not, it does get moisture in it, and it breaks down. So it has a heat level to it. So there's a number to it. So it breaks down with the heat, and the brakes get real hot. So that fluid kind of slowly starts to, like, break down, just like your motor oil. So you need to flush and clean it so that you have a secure brake performance. And also don't forget contaminated brake fluid will contaminate the rubber parts of your brakes. Rubber parts, what does it mean? Listen, your brakes have rubber in them. Flex hoses are made of rubber. Caliper seals, wheel cylinders, they all have rubber in them. They have to be checked and made sure that they're not swollen or torn or get contaminated by bad brake fluid.

So in this 2000 Jeep, I'm gonna look for power steering, see if the main seal's leaking, if it's fluid pouring out everywhere. I can see work's been done on this. Has a new radiator cap, has a brand-new radiator, new reservoir on the power steering pump, new drive belt, serp belt, new water pump. Valve cover gaskets, you wanna look at gaskets and see if they're seeping. I list them as seeping, leaking, and pouring. Okay? Seeping doesn't need to be too much of a rush. You just know what's happening, you know what's there. And you're gonna fix it eventually. Pouring, you need to fix it. And leaking. They're pretty much the same, right?

This is pretty common with these Jeeps. Don't think you're special if it's happening to you, it happens to all of them. These grommets get petrified, they get really hard, and they don't seal anymore, and the blow-by comes out and blows by. You can pick that up at your Jeep dealer. Just to keep that cleaned up and get a good vacuum in there. It's not that it's vacuum as much as it's just recycling air through there, and you don't want that seeping out.

We're gonna look at hoses, see any hoses, see if they need to be fixed or replaced. Riding, wearing. Look at that. So this is pretty common. See the wear mark right here, that clamp has just been riding for years right there. That's gonna be a weak point. But that's the way someone set that right there just like that. So you know what, I'll probably keep an eye on it, and I will replace that maybe in six months or so. That's not too much of an emergency for me unless I'm gonna go for a long, long trip.

Battery. This doesn't have a hold-down. So it rocks around like that. I wanna put a battery hold-down on that. That's pretty important to me. Only because, heaven forbid, I was in an emergency situation, I slam my brakes on, my vehicle slid around, I don't want this battery flipping around inside his vehicle, acid gets everywhere, and then you're just opening up a can of worms. Battery hold-down, always a good thing.

So the other thing over here, we can see oil leaks, whether the oil filter housing, which these are notorious for, for dripping. It looks pretty dry. Someone's already done it probably a few times. So that's clean. And we just have some seepage. This is real normal for a Jeep. And that'll be fun to just poke at and do at my own time, my own leisure repair. So I can just write that as real moderate, doesn't have to be done right away.

EVAP lines are over here, you know, the heater hoses, AC lines, nothing's corroded. I don't see tons of rust on the...corrosion like that right there. That could be white Teflon tape or white Teflon paste that they put so that that switch didn't seal, didn't leak out the seal. But almost every AC system has. Most of them put dye in it. You can't see the green with your eye, but you'll see the oils coming out of where they connect. And it's a seepage wet. So that means your AC is not gonna work. So you wanna take that in consideration and get that fixed.

So fuel lines, especially on something this old. You've got your fuel line that goes in, it's the feed right here. That's pretty rusted. That's been there for a while, and no one's quite disturbed that for a long time.

Injectors. Now, you'll see them swell and split when they get real old. And this one is doing it right there. You can see the casing splitting. So what happens in there, that's not gonna perform at the best performance. So if I have a misfire or a hesitation, these injectors they're only good for so long. They got a little screen in there, and that solenoid connects back and forth and lets this shower come out. Then, you know, if you don't have a good shower, you don't have good performance. So you might wanna check this whole rail out. And if this is a vehicle you're gonna use daily... Look how rusted this rail is. So if that's rusted like that on the outside, I don't know what the inside is gonna be too pleasant about. So you might wanna check into a whole new fuel rail and replace the injectors. They're not leaking. These rubber seals down here do leak. You wanna look for fuel loss, and you'll smell it when it runs. This is splitting, like I said, so that's an injector you wanna pay close attention to.

So you're gonna wanna raise your vehicle. Whether you have a jack and jack stands or if you have availability to a lift, that would be awesome. Lift it up, good support. And this doesn't have like a strut. So you can grab this to check your ball joints and go up and down like this and then left and right for your tie rod ends and also the wheel bearing. That's how you would check the wheel bearing. You can also spin it and see if you hear a growl. If you're experiencing a growl, the first thing you do is check your wheel bearings. But here we have no play either way, up and down. You can also take a bar, if you have a hard surface, like a nice... You put a brick underneath there, a nice little patio brick. You can put a bar, leave it this far off the ground and pry it up and down. That way you can check your ball joints if you don't have the strength to go that way.

And we're just gonna look all around, fender well rust, rot. Especially if you're purchasing it and it's got high mileage, you wanna see what the previous...how they took care of it, the owner, and go from there.

Tires, tread, you can always have tons of tread, but you can have tons of tread on a tire that's no good because they have age to them. So you wanna check the age of your tires. So a lot of deep tread can mean, oh, it's primo, but is it really? Let's look at the sidewalls. Look at any dry rot that can happen from sitting, and then look at the age. So you're gonna find the DOT right here and go down. And when you see a four-digit number, 3017, that's the 30th week of the year 2017. That's when this tire was made. So do the math. This thing is four years old, and you're in great shape for four years old. But you wanna keep an eye for dry rot.

So what I'm gonna do, just like I did from the top, I'm gonna start at the driver's side and work my way around. I'm gonna look at all sorts of things. So first thing I'm gonna look at is, being a 2000, I will wanna look at frame in every section of this vehicle. Jeeps are notorious for frame rot. And we know this has it, so we're gonna just show you where it is. So up here is pretty strong. Even the radiator support is nice and clean. I don't see anything. Steering box is seeping. See it right there. That's coming right out of the steering shaft. That's a seal that I'm gonna keep an eye on if I was to buy this or run it. And I'm gonna probably end up doing that within the next six months. Front end's all new. I don't have to worry about that. I already showed you how to check it out.

Now, brakes, once you get underneath here, you can get a real good picture of the brakes. These are supposed to have backing plates on them, but I'm gonna tell you right now a 2000 more than likely will not have a backing plate on it. And if you can get one, that's great, replace it if you can't. This is what you're gonna see. I get new rotors, new calipers, but you're gonna check for rotted rotors, any kind of movement, broken boots on your suspension, caliper boots, caliper seals, which are up in here, brake fluid will be coming out. But we already checked our brake fluid, and we know the level is high, so, hopefully, if we're purchasing it, someone didn't just top it off to fool us.

Now, we've got rot on the differential. This got tons of surface rot, but nothing I would be too worried about. We have a pinion seal leak here. That's pretty common. What we're gonna see on a lot of these Jeeps is rot like this. So if you are aware of it and you want this vehicle bad enough, be ready to do some deep repairs. And it's a nice car. It's a 2000 Cherokee. It's in clean condition, but you're gonna find things like this. And this is probably not gonna pass any safety procedure from any state that has a state inspection.

So while you're on this side, you're gonna look at fuel lines, EVAP hoses, and everything. This vehicle only has a fuel supply line and a vet return line. So this is the fuel supply line. It goes right up in there. Looks fine. These have the plastic hoses. We got brake lines in here. They look like they've been replaced before. There is a union. And I can tell you in a couple of states I've worked in, that is illegal. But that's something I would probably take care of right away. Because I don't want a union leaking on me at all.

So we can see a good body, solid body right here, all the way down. We got some frame rust right here, and that's caused by someone that actually lifted this up incorrectly. They punctured the steel, and then they left it like that. And then the water did its damage, road salt. Body solid right here. And then it gets to the rocker panel on the back, and we have a typical hole, but that's easy bodywork, and for a 2000 Jeep, that's nothing I would worry about.

So you inherited it or bought it, or you haven't been underneath it for a while, and you look up and you see this tranny leak like this, that's pretty severe. That's gonna be my top list to fix because, for one, I don't wanna run out of fluid, because then I'll burn my transmission, and then that's completely opposite of what I wanna do.

So fluid is just like anything, gravity overtakes, so nothing goes up, everything comes down. So you wanna look from the top up. Now, that transmission is dry, all the way up, except for the selector switch right here. That little selector switch seal, these are known to have a leakage and they'll seep. It could run on the gasket and come down and people would be like, "Oh, it's just the gasket." Do the job. And without replacing that seal, it's gonna happen again and again. So I'm checking both sides. It's nothing over here. It's dry. So I would do the pan again, additional to this. You need the pan down anyways to do that seal. Replace that seal in the pan gasket. And you do have some rust here on this pan. Just so you know, when you take it down, look on the inside because a lot of that rust starts on the inside of the pan, and then it works its way out, believe it or not. I've seen rust inside oil pans, a big quarter-size hole, and on the outside, it looks perfectly fine. Within six months, you can put your finger through it. So if you see rust ever on the inside of an oil pan, tranny pan, differential cover, just replace it. Don't wait. Just you get it off in your hand and you see it, replace it.

Another thing about Jeeps, if you've got that straight six, that 4.0 we all love, the exhaust manifold cracks. They all do. They've been replaced, I'm sure. And if you bought this used with 200-something miles on it, it's been replaced. So you can see up through the driver's fender well, kind of get a good look at it. And you wanna look for cracks. If they're cracked, that's way up there on the top to get repaired because you don't wanna breathe those fumes in for one, and two, it is loud.

So, now, we've worked our way past the transmission, and we're still looking on both sides, looking at exhaust, looking at the floorboards. We got no rot on the floorboards. We have that little problem with the frame, but transfer case. So we can see right here we have a pretty good grip coming between the transfer case and the transmission. And that's just a paper gasket in there, where that meets. There's a seal internally, but that paper gasket. So the seal's more than likely leaking and it's building up, and the paper gasket says, "Nah, I'm not holding anymore." So it's coming out.

I probably would run if I was to buy this and say I just bought it, and I love it, and I'm gonna keep it, and it runs. I'm gonna drive that probably for four months, three to four months, to listen to everything else. Make sure I don't have an engine problem. Make sure the transmission shifts right. Then I'll address this. It's not life-threatening. But I'm gonna check it after that. But let's check the fluid and see if it's ever been taken care of and maintained.

So I have a Allen head, three-eighths. It's a standard socket. And I'm gonna put it right in there and gonna take the top one out and loosen it up. Now, let's see what kind of fluid if it flows out or if I have to get some of that out there. Now, to check that, pinky finger usually. Bring it in and just bend it down. And about an eighth of an inch down should be the fluid. Oh, yeah, look at that. That is black. That's not oil, my friend. And that's not ATF fluid. That was gear fluid at one point, and it's black. Good news is this thing is hard because that needs to be changed ASAP.

Now, drain it right here. You can drain it and then fill it again with the proper fluid that it requires. And then still address that leak later on. Or you can do it all at once. But it's got enough in it, it's not low on fluid, it's just low in viscosity. That's not thick at all. And the good news is it's gonna get taken care of. And just snug it up.

So we can see that the front driveshaft was new, but you would check that the same way you're gonna check this. This is the rear driveshaft. You wanna check your U-joints. You wanna grab the U-joint and give it a twist like this and up and down. And that's also how you can check the pinion gear in there to make sure that that gear, that bearing's not worn out. That's transmission, transfer case, should I say. But right there is a little bit of knocking. But that's nothing for a 2000 Jeep Cherokee with over 100,000 miles on it. So this, I'm just gonna listen for when I drive for a howling noise, then I would know if that bearing is to be replaced.

So, now, I'm still over here on the passenger side. I wanna check my parking brake, a.k.a. e-brake, cables. So what I'm gonna do is pull down on them and see if they move in and out. And they do. So those are moving good. And the front cable, I can see a clear spot here. So it might be engaged right now. Disengaged right now. But I'm not getting any movement out of that. So I'm gonna check that out when I lower it. I'm gonna pull up on the e-brake cable. And if it pulls up freely, then it's just that I didn't have my Wheaties or spinach. But look at this right here. This was pretty rusted. That's something that's gonna have to be taken care of. I'm gonna put that on my next 90 to 6-month repair. But this one, here we go. This is what we're gonna need to really look at. A lot of people, even professionals, I see don't look real close at the moulage right here. We're missing a leaf spring. Came out to this point, and it's missing. It's broken. It's gone. And the bushings are rotted. They're pretty bad in here. So those bolts are gonna be really hard to get in and out.

So I know that I'm gonna have to look at some good hardware, maybe a whole new leaf pack to do it right. I'm gonna get two leaf packs, one for both sides, so I have proper ride height. Boy, that would be a nice ride after that's all done. It's gonna look good too. It'll raise it up to the proper road height that is supposed to be at and ride height. So the steering will be perfect too.

So I'm gonna look at metal lines, rubber lines. We've got a brand-new brake line here. It looks like someone ran a copper line through. That's actually going into the gas tank, is it? Let's see. Yeah, that's a fuel line. So this brake line right here, it's not a brake line, it's an EVAP line. But that's a brake line. So right there, pretty corroded. Nothing leaking, though. This being an emission line, if I get an emission code, this is one of the first things I'm gonna look at. This canister looks factory. That is 2000. That's something that's gonna come up real fast with a code, I'm sure. And you just look around. I know the brakes are new, so new drums on it. Backing plates are in good shape. Then I'll look for leaks around the wheel cylinder. I don't see any wetness around that, so I know that that wheel cylinder is in good shape, probably doing its job. Fairly brand-new brake line here. Flex hose. That's not a flex hose, that's a vent. That's a vent hose. And that's good. You wanna make sure that's connected. Sometimes they come undone, and people go four-wheeling or just go around having some good times. And water gets in this differential. And that's where you run into a lot of problems.

So here we are getting to the end of the vehicle, into the end of the video almost. This is the rear differential cover. Well, I'm gonna replace that cover because that is just not looking too happy. I know when I change it, I'm gonna change the fluid at the same time, and then I can take a real good look at the gears inside. Make sure that those are wearing properly. And I'm gonna drive it around, make sure the fluid levels first. I'm gonna make sure it's at least the proper level driving around, and I'm gonna listen to external bearings. The bearings inside the differential here, see if they have any howling, because if I do when I take this cover off, I'm gonna pull the axles out and get everything replaced at the same time.

Let's check the fluid. It's a rubber seal cover. It's really easy. Just a flathead screwdriver or a pry bar. And then you just got to pop that right off. And look at that. Take a little sniff. Let's see what we got. Well, at least it's got a proper level in there. It's right about here, the level is. So I know it's not extremely low. But that's what we call a dirty golden brown. It's not something that's...it's not new fluid, I can tell you that. And I can tell by smelling. So, yeah, they probably had good leak seeping for a while. They just keep adding during the oil changes or whenever they felt like it.

So the good news is they didn't...hopefully didn't let it run low, because it's right here, but it smells burnt. So we will repair that. That will be on my top list to do. So, now, I'm just gonna go do the whole back end of the vehicle. I'm looking for structure-wise. The structure seems pretty good. This has a very old tow bar on it. So that's something I would probably address. I would probably take this whole tow bar down. It's bolted into the frame. I wanna take that down, and I'm gonna look at the frame condition underneath that and hope that it's in solid shape. It's pretty solid right up to that, so that'd be good. I'll probably replace it with a brand-new one because it's always good to have a little tow hitch on.

So, now, I'm on my driver's side, going back this way. I can see some bodywork that needs to be taken care of here. There we go. We're gonna go this way. Frame is still looking good, which I'm happy about because this is where you'll see a lot of the frame rot on all these Jeeps, is on this downward body rot.
Looks good. Floorboards look good. Even the running boards on the side are good. So the floorboards look good, pretty solid. Little mishap here with someone lifting it up. Didn't lift it up correctly or jack it up. Well, this is it for underneath, so now I'm gonna lower it back down.

So that's the end of my video on the 2000 Jeep Cherokee for a high-mileage check-over. Let's hope it helped you out and hope you enjoyed it. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe and don't forget to ring that bell because then it will turn on all your notifications and you won't miss a future video.