Weekend adventures with our Jeep

You may have read some of my Tweets and mostly my Facebook statuses and information from this previous weekend.

Boy, oh boy, what a weekend! The kids and I headed to Wichita, KS on Saturday morning to take Tucker to his Gamaw & Pops to spend a couple of weeks with them for the summer. While I was expecting a trip there (5 hours on way) and a trip back, we encountered some issues with my Jeep Commander that I just bought…. 2 months ago.  I noticed that the back end started to hum. At first, I thought it was road noise. About an hour later, it seemed louder. Well, the wind had picked up, so again I thought road noise. We were on the Kansas Turnpike and decided to stay on the Turnpike and we met Gamaw at one of the service center areas that are on the Turnpike. This was a gas station and a nice size McDonald’s. if you’ve been on the Kansas Turnpike, this is pretty much a very long, boring stream of road that you cannot get off of, unless you want to spend about $10 to get back on, then off again. Once we made it to McDonald’s, we all got out of the Jeep and went in to get the kids some lunch.

Instead of hanging around, we decided to load Gamaw’s car with Tucker’s things and go ahead and go our ways. This was a good idea, so we thought,  but once I started back on the Turnpike, my Jeep was more like screaming at me. This is a noise that I will forever remember. Mom had called me to tell me something funny that Tucker said or did, and said to me ‘Oh my God! What is that noise???” It was my Jeep. She heard it and said it was so loud. I called the dealer where I bought the Jeep, in the hopes that I would get some type of guidance or suggestion as to what I needed to do. I have never broken down before, so I just wanted to hear a voice for a suggestion, any suggestion as for what do I do? They suggested for me to keep driving and if I broke down, use my warranty to call a tow truck. Ok. Uh…. The Turnpike is a good 100+ miles of nothing but road. Here I was with my 2 year old. That’s just what I needed to do was to chance breaking down with my toddler with me. I called the warranty place to see about a tow truck – they said they would tow me 100 miles, then they would either leave my Jeep at their 100 mile mark for what’s on my warranty, or they would need payment for the remaining 183 miles left to my doorstep. Great, huh?

I decided to turn around, go to Walmart service center to have them check my fluids. Keep in mind that this was about 5:00pm on a Saturday and no service location was open. They checked everything and said fluids looked ok, but they saw an issue with the rear end… but they weren’t certified to make that diagnosis or repairs. I was fine with that. I knew that would happen anyway, but I wanted to get someone to physically look at everything while I was able to.

Motel 8 was just a block away, so I took the Jeep slowly to the motel and Kambry and I stayed overnight. The next morning, there just so happen to have been a mechanic in the lobby and he took a look at the Jeep and right away saw rear end issues, among other things. Since hubby was in route to pick Kambry and I up, we had some time to kill, so we took it to Firestone since they were open. They looked at it and suggested to leave it with them, on their lot (thank goodness for the manager on duty! He let us hang out until Hubby got there to pick us up) so we left the keys with the Firestone manager and this morning, I called a Jeep service center in Wichita, KS.

While I was waiting on the service place to call me back, I had some background checks done on the Jeep. It had been in a front end collision and was auctioned off. How lovely is that? I was told that it had never been in an accident and the service records were clear. My gut was right.

Current issues are:

• The rear end needs to be completely rebuilt.
• Pinion bearings need to be replaced.

Cost: $1200.00

This seems like a whole lot of issues for something with less than 30k miles. My warranty will pay for it all, with the exception of $100.00 deductible. Great. I am fine with that. I will get rental car reimbursement, but we will not be able to go pick up the Jeep until next Tuesday or Wednesday since we will be out of town.

I have never had any issues with this car dealership before now. I have purchased three vehicles from this dealership in the past. I was told by the dealership that if I am not confident in the Jeep once it’s back from repair, that they will get me in another vehicle…. with a clear title and no previous damage done to it.

We shall see what happens now. We are due to go back to the dealership that I bought it from, the first of August, just before heading off to NYC for BlogHer and we will be taking the Jeep there for a full look and if we are not comfortable keeping it, we may just end up leaving it and going home with something else. I refuse to own a vehicle that I was lied to about it’s history and with failures this major, just at two months of owning it. I will buy a golf cart to get around in if I have to.

I have never had to do a CarFAX report on a vehicle before. Thank goodness I have friends in just about all fields of life, and a mechanic friend was able to get me a CarFAX first thing this morning on the Jeep. No matter how much you trust a car dealership or the salesman, always always look in to the car’s history. This is the first time in about my 15 vehicles I have purchased that I have ever had any issues with. Don’t trust anyone. Do your homework. Don’t be shy to ask about it’s history and do not think that you are stuck with a crappy vehicle. Work with the dealership to see if they will attempt to make it right. If not, then pursue your legal rights… oh, and always buy an extended warranty. They do come in handy.

I will keep you posted on the updates that happen.