Jeep work

We had planned to have Jimmy work on Gracie while we were at the farm... We had not really planned for him to work on the Jeep -- we weren't aware of how much work the Jeep needed... We had been thinking that we may need to plan to replace the Jeep soon - there have been some new issues that have come up on it - we asked Jimmy if he would do some diagnostics on it -- it turned out he was able to fix the problems, some of them requiring a number of parts and quite a bit of work on his part.

Jeep in the shop up on jacks for diagnostics...

The diagnostician (Jimmy) under the Jeep

Removing the front drive shaft -- it would vibrate at 50-60MPH which was one of the noises we had noticed.

Front drive shaft needs replacement -- it is not required except when we use 4 wheel drive in the Jeep (which is very infrequent). We had considered not replacing it, but we were able to find the replacement part at NAPA and figured it might be better to have the ability to use 4WD.

We also needed new rear brakes (they were in pretty bad shape - Jimmy didn't even want me to drive the Jeep to pick up the parts...

So... I drove their Envoy to the NAPA on Friday - I saw this Jeep at a stoplight with "I am the Black Jeep of the Family" on the back of a black Jeep.

New brake rotors going on. Jimmy replaced the rear rotors, calipers, and pads, as well as the front drive shaft.

After doing all that, the Jeep was so much quieter when we were driving it, but... it still made quite a noise when we were backing up, and particularly when we were turning and backing up. Jimmy diagnosed it as worn out control arm bushings - and found replacement ones at O'Reilly that we were able to pick up on Saturday morning. He replaced those on Saturday afternoon. 

We feel like we have a brand new Jeep -- and can delay considering a replacement vehicle for a while, we hope!