I am turning in my 1995 Jeep Cherokee today for a new car. It has 362,841 miles on it. I've had some seriously good times with this car, and resisted getting rid of it for a few years now.
However, as I am finally turning it in and contemplating that it is going to be destroyed in the Cash for Clunkers program, I have been thinking about all the reasons why I am not sad to see it go. You see, as an old car, it has accrued all sorts of aliments that I have ignored up to now. Here is a partial list of what I can remember:
The roof leaks above the driver's side front windshield, leaving puddles in the front driver's floor.
The windshield is pitted and has some little cracks to the point where it is hard to see out of.
It is increasingly difficult to put it into reverse, I have to put it in 2nd, jog it, and quickly go over to reverse.
It smells funny from all the drinks I have spilled in it.
It is loud. The seals on the windows have successively failed to the point that the highway speed wind whistles through the little cracks. It has also lost a couple of insulating or shielding panels so that you can hear road and engine noise from below the car.
The muffler front connection pipe rusted through an fell off last month. I rigged it back together, but realized it wouldn't last much longer.
The radio doesn't work worth a damn. The cassette stopped working about 3 years ago and the radio volume has such rusty points in the knob that it sounds like an old fashioned AM radio on a lightning storm when you adjust the volume. Sound quality is horrible.
Gas gauge isn't accurate.
Speedometer hasn't been accurate for years.
There are multiple lights out that I haven't tried to fix.
The blower has one speed, high.
The rear tire mount sagged, but still works. You have to lift the tire to get it to catch closed.
The hatch back pistons work intermittently. Sometimes they hold the hatch up, other times they don't.
The front tires are bald. Worst, I replaced the rear tires 4 months ago, so the rest of the 2 years or 30,000 miles I could have gotten out of them is wasted.
The rear shocks and springs are about shot. Worst, the front ones failed last month and I had to replace them.
The emergency brake hasn't worked well for years.
The headlights are so dim I can't see well at night.
The headliner is coming off right above my head.
The front bumper is rusting through
The rear tire mount is rusty to the point where it almost doesn't catch and it has to be repainted every year.
The roof around the upper rear tail light is rusting through.
The cargo strips on the roof are coming off.
I have a small hit on the right front fender above the wheel that I got a month ago and never repaired.
The light cover on the left front is cracked from when I hit a deer 4 years ago.
The driver's window won't go up by the handle when you take it all the way down.
The driver's side door lock freezes in the winter.
The radiator inexplicably leaks and the motor tries to overheat, but I think that's just a loose radiator cap.
The rear cargo light stopped working a couple of years ago.
The rear door latches are so hard to open that I have to open it for people.
One the plus side, happy memories:
This is the car I took to Colorado about 4 times, Yellowstone and the Black Hills, New Orleans and Tampa, and to the Chicago Marathon, as well as every other fun trip in the last 15 years.
I quit chewing tobacco the day I picked it up from the dealer and haven't touched the stuff since then.
I never got it stuck 4-wheeling.
It's the car I took my wife to the hospital in when we had our son, and it's the car I took our son home in.
It's run well and faithfully for 15 years and it could carry a ton of stuff inside it.
I was able to pull the buzzer alarm out when I first bought it and it hasn't buzzed to warn me about anything since. It's nice and quiet when it comes to annoying alarms
I pulled the driver's side door light switch out when I first bought it, and I can get in and out of the car at night without a light going off.
The 4WD still works, but I never used it enough.
OK, I need to go turn it over to be put out of it's misery.
I am looking forward to having a new car.
