1996 Jeep Wrangler Sport from North America - Comments

I have had significant transmission problems.

1. Stick shift failed after about 16,000 miles, leaving me without control of car. Had to be towed to dealer, who "snapped it" back into place.

2. During cross-country trip, car locked into 5th gear at a highway interchange, leaving me stranded for nearly 3 weeks while fighting with Chrysler as to warranty coverage for new transmission.

Chrysler ultimately covered a new transmission installation.

I am still spooked when driving, expecting the stick shift to fail again, or the clutch to go out, or something equally disturbing and dangerous.

My faith in American car manufacturing has been shaken by this car, and the level of customer service at our dealers is appalling.

I see that the owner drove a Honda civic before the jeep.

I have owned a jeep for a long time in fact my current SE has over 130K miles on it. And my wife owns a Honda Civic.

The fact is the jeep has a much wider longer shift pattern, and many people who have driven smaller cars fail to move the stick enough to put the jeep fully into gear which puts huge amounts of strain on the transmission the shifting assembly and can make it prone to falling out of gear and or sticking in gear. Conversely a jeep driver who goes into a small tight pattern car tends to slam the car into gear doing equally as much damage to the transmission. This driver most likely experienced this, which cannot be blamed on the jeeps reliability, just an inefficiency in its shifting pattern which an aware driver could compensate for.

Just so you know there is no such thing as a 1996 Jeep Wrangler. Just thought that I would let you know.

Actually there is a 1986 Jeep wrangler. I ordered, bought and still have it in 1985. The detail is in the fact that it was made by AMC and I picked it up in December 1985...

Let's get the facts straight - The Wrangler YJ which replaced the CJ (which was not called a Wrangler) was introduced in 1986 as a 1987 model therefore there were no 1986 Wranglers - even the ones produced and sold in 1986 were designated 1987 models.

Similarly there were no 1996 model Wranglers either - the 1995 model Wrangler YJ had a longer than usual production run, until the 1997 Wrangler TJ was introduced in 1996 as a 1997 model.

Also there were no V6 model YJ's or TJ's - The YJ originally was available with a four cylinder engine or the 4.2 liter in-line six which was replaced by the 4.0 liter in-line six and this 4.0 liter in-line six continued to be available throughout the production run of the TJ. It wasn't until the introduction of the 2007 model JK Wrangler, that the 4.0 was replaced with the 3.8 liter V6.

I'm amazed at the fact that some Jeep owners don't even know what engine they have in their Jeep or what model they own.