At $5,000, Is This 1998 Jeep Cherokee A Good Deal Despite Its Bad Transmission?

According to the ad, today’s Nice Price or No Dice Cherokee needs “some love.” More precisely, it needs a new or rebuilt transmission. Let’s see if it’s priced to overlook that sizable flaw.

There are certain things in life worth hanging onto: that first dollar you ever earned; a comfortable pair of old blue jeans for the weekends; etc. You get the idea. Unfortunately for its seller, few of you felt yesterday’s 1980 Datsun 510 wagon was a car worth keeping around. Nice as it was—described in the ad as being in “unbelievable original condition”—it didn’t seem to find favor at its $13,900 asking price. That substantial sum resulted in an equally substantial 88 percent No Dice loss to kick off our week.

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The 1998 Jeep Cherokee 2-door, the fate of which we’re contemplating today,e looks just as nice as yesterday’s Datsun, but it is almost two decades newer and is a model that enjoys a decent following so it’s not unexpected to want to have it stick around.

The problem, however, is that it might just stick around—literally—owed to a bad gearbox. According to the ad, the five-speed manual in question seemingly “works fine and shifts smoothly” The complaint is that when underway it whines loudly and, adding insult to injury, it apparently also leaks oil.

Now, you might think that this being a Jeep and Jeeps, in general, being 4WD, dealing with transmission trouble would be a major pain in the butt. The good news here is that this Jeep appears to be poverty spec and is 2WD only. That means no transfer case to wrestle with so the transmission should easily be yanked in the course of a morning and a replacement shoved back up in before it’s even beer o’clock.

The better news is that the Aisin-Warner AX5 gearbox seems pretty plentiful on eBay with tested units going from anywhere from $500 to $1,000 plus shipping. Alternatively, a local junkyard would likely have a slew. For the ambitious with time on their hands, rebuild kits are available for even less than a used box.

But is the rest of the truck worth the investment and time? Again, this is the cheap-seats edition of the old-school Cherokee. That means Armstrong window winders and, more worryingly, Jeep’s 2.5-liter OHV four under the hood. That only makes a modest 121 horsepower and 139 lb-ft of torque, much less than its six-cylinder big brothers. Then again, this is a 2WD truck so it’s unlikely that any heroics will be asked of the engine and, in their support, these are pretty reliable mills.