Originally Posted by tonysrich

On the 8th of Aug after only about 15 minutes or so of driving on Stockton beach my recently purchased 07 JK Rubicon Auto decided to spontaniously combust.

I can vouch for the fact, in hindsight, that it was definately the ESP overloading the tranny. I had my wife and two daughters in the car and I definately wasn't going for it but the engine was really struggling. Only two weeks before I'd been out to Boat Harbour and the car powered out there but here it was dying. After about ten minutes I noticed the water temp going up so I slowed down to a crawl to cool it thinking that when she'd cooled down a bit I might head back. The needle came down but then we noticed smoke coming from under the gear box. We bailed out and she just went up. Only oil goes up like that and only when it's real hot. And forget about an auto shop fire extingisher folks, you would have needed a five man fire team like at the race track to put my car out, she was HOT! And there is bugger all left to examine to find a cause. And of course I'd neve rheard of any of this untill my car burnt up. It wasn't till then that I checked out the forum's to get some answers. If I'd know on the day I'd have turned back as soon as she started to feel overloaded.

Now I reckon that it's not just some cars with overactive ESP that do this, but only some cars, some of the time, if you get what I mean. Two weeks previous I was haveing no problems in the sand at all. I even left the family on the beach while I gave it some real stick while the ranger wasn't watching in the ludercrously named "Dune Area" of Boat Harbour. She powered like a demon and the ESP never seemed to take over at all.

So whats the good news? The General Manager for Parts and Service for Chrysler Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, Robert Moorcroft, heard about it, looked me up and rang me personally to reassure me that Chrsyler/Jeep would not only replace my car but all the non Jeep accessories fitted to it. I don't know about the experiences that some of you may have had with your local Jeep crew but this guy and the State Warrenty Manager, Tony Harris, are seriously concerned about these occurances and are definately looking for answers. The trouble is that while there has been a lot of talk about a lot of fires there have actually has been very few JK's burn out world wide. I know cause I'ver spent weeks scanning the net for examples. It's a bit like chinese whispers, everyones talking but they don't realise that it's all about the same fires, less than a dozen cars that I can find and that's out of over two hundred thousand sold. I swear if there are more genuine cases I can't find them. And those cars that have burnt, have been so destroyed that there is nothing left for Jeep to examine for answers.

So what is the solution to all this while we wait for an answer? Yes, if you have an auto buy the biggest tranny cooler you can afford and get a tranny temp gauge mounted dead centre above the steering wheel where you can't miss it, I am with my next car. If you don't let her heat up then she won't burn.

And I'm lucky too cause it's taken Chrysler/Jeep almost a month to find the only unsold Rubicon left in the whole country and apparently there are none coming over on the next shipment at the end of the year.

So don't give Chrysler/Jeep too much crap, there are some really good guys out there looking after us. We might be a smalll group and most people wouldn't understand but it is our fanatisism that helps keep the good ship Jeep afloat and some people at Jeep know it.