Sup all! Just took my now month-old JK offroad for the first time last weekend! Held up extremely well considering how muddy and icy it was, particularly with the wimpy tires I have. It was a bit strange running trails with such little noise, not that I'm complaining. In any case, after about and hour of light-med bouncing around and unstucking, we noticed a burning plastic smell and a bit of white smoke coming from the front passenger side. Engine temp was normal. I shut the thing off and opened the hood - nothing unusual except some strange, low humming, clicking and whirring. The engine was off, but the ignition was still on "on". The noises sounds electro-mechanical and well normal, but I'm used to my old primitive, uncomplicated TJ engine and so was a bit startled. The smell and smoke dissipated quickly, within 1-2 minutes. I forgot to turn off ESP before heading on the trail, and my guess is that TCS was going crazy applying the front right brake while I was wheeling around, causing excessive heat. Is this plausible? Has anyone else experienced this? The engine noises I cannot explain. Lastly, is there really no way to secure the rear seat after it's been folded down? I've searched everywhere for an answer with no luck.

 

bump......

 

It might be the labels/stickers burning off the exhaust headers, etc. They used to make clips for the TJ to secure the seat. I haven't found any for the JK yet but the TJ ones should work. I am looking into this for me also. I'll post here if I find something definitively.

 

So what is the rear seat question?

 

If the motors hot then the fan will run after the engine is shut off. I took mine out just a couple days after I got her. All the smells I had were of new car burn-in. Also ESP automatically shuts off in 4L but not in 4H. I did not manually shut mine off and had no issues.
It actually smelled worse after I had te catback installed and it was burning in!

 

Did the smoke happen when you hit water? If so then its probably just steam from the hot exhaust. The noise youre talkin about is the fan most likely when you idle the car for a bit the engine temp goes up so it turns on the fan to keep air running past the radiator. I guess they could have put a quieter fan but thats chrysler for you....

 

Thanks all for the replies. The smoke occurred suddenly towards the end of the run, on dry dirt and had a distinctive burning plasticy smell, but was white and wispy. Hopefully just burn-in, I haven't had any issues since.

The rear seat issue is that after it is folded down, it just sits there unsecured, and in cases of rapid acceleration, uphill travel, or big bumps, the thing can roll back into the cargo area. I had my dog back there and it scared the crap out of him once, and it's just dangerous to have it flopping around. I can't see any designed tie-down points to strap it down, or even any convenient ones like in the tj. Anybody have an idea on how to deal with this?

 

Do you have an automatic?

 

Backseat... take it out!

 

Did it smell like brakes? Last year, I test drove one and we forgot to turn off the ESP in 4HI while trying to get out of a ditch full of the snow on the dealer lot. I didn't notice any smoke, but things smelled really bad.