Appreciate the interest, guys - truth is, I have been long involved in moving from my residence of 45yrs in West Houston to the deep piney woods north of Cleveland, Texas, with all the collected automotive, mechanical, and electrical paraphenalia acquired in the intervening age from my youth to my silver years - required two 40ft containers, three 20ft containers, a 20ft 18-wheeler box, and four 24ft gooseneck lowboy loads - finished up and in-place on-site Sept 2010, current residence an old RV camper - am now involved in sorting, separating, stacking, and preparing for winter - maybe about 2yrs till it's all organized - drove the subject KJ CRD, disastrously parked it under an oak tree, more on this in a sec - one more 24ft trailer load with the big '89 gmctd crewcab Diesel 4wd dually - used the '96 6sp Dodge dually to tow everything out here - drove the '01 Dodge, parked it, but not under or near an oak tree.
To wit, after one of the last moves we were sitting in bro-in-law's garage during an intense thunder-storm, with frightening lightning displays, not 25ft from the li'l Jeep, when an intense white light occured at the same instant as the ear-drum shattering sonic blast, temporarily blinding and deafening us - when we recovered, the oak tree adjacent the Jeep was smoking, all the bark from the tallest branch, down the Jeep-side of the tree, and on the root under the Jeep, had been completely removed and splintered, including erupting the ground covering the root - the alarm was sounding off from sheer terror, but, aside from all the splintered bark covering it, The li'l KJ seemed to have survived the ordeal - I decided to move the Liberty to another location after the storm had subsided, but the locks would not respond to the key fob - manually unlocking and opening the driver's door, I immediately noticed the odor of char-broiled electrical - hmmmm, not good, I thought - placed the key in the ignition switch, nothing, no indicators, lights or lighting - got out, opened the hood to intense heat and increased odor of severe electrical damage - used the flashlight to inspect various areas of wiring, but no evidence of blackened insulation - proceded to remove the new Red-top gel-cell battery, only to find it was the source of the heat, and difficult to touch - got one cable removed, checked with the DVM to find 00.000v, totally dead - resistance-check across the Pos-Neg cable terminals revealed 0 ohms, dead short - but where? - no burned insulation could be seen, yet burned insulation odor was very prevalent, even with the hood open - later, after cooling, the gel-cell took a full recharge, passed the appropriate load-tests - much later, couple of months, reconnected the fully-charged Red-top, no arcing, all electrical, incl the alarms, proved functional - but no start, not even a click from the relay or starter - which would be a correct response, since PCM will prevent starting in event of imminent component failure - by then, the burned odor semed to be stronger along the driver's side fender and firewall, but no damage in the electrical center, with all it's relays and fuses - narrowed it down to the glow-plug relay, which was welded to the harness connector - the connector is melted and fused to the terminals, and the relay terminals are blackened and fused to the surrounding plastic case, yet no blackening of the wiring in the harness to the glowplugs, ignition, and control - not even browned - go figger
So, there it sits, needing my help, but must wait it's turn in the due course of events required as I settle-in here in the deep woods over this Fall-Winter season - took a month-and-a-half to get sewer, another month to get hot water, then a month after the first cold spell to get heat in this old camper
Ha!! Bet yer sorry you even asked, now, huh (how he does rattle on!)? But, life goes on, and then, there's my new project, a 1986 Jeep Cherokee 2.1L TurboDiesel 5sp 4dr, all original, needing a gentle application of care and discovery........................
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