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Everything stopped... crazy

3K views 14 replies 13 participants last post by  starscream 
#1 ·
Was at a friends tonight who has a fairly loaded GC 2wd Laredo. He was driving on the interstate when everything shutoff. No power steering, no power brakes, no engine, etc. He and his family coasted safely to the side with some effort, and had towed to the dealer. They said some part had vibrated loose that controls the electrical systems, that never should have, and said he's lucky it didn't damage the engine more. They fixed and assured him it wouldn't happen again and was a factory assembly fault.

Anyone ever heard of this? Crazy.
 
#3 ·
Will do... he said he asked what the deal was and if it would happen again. They said they've never seen it before ever and shouldn't have happened. He said it was some kind of connector terminal for the electrical system that wasn't tightened down properly and simply vibrated loose, undoing the connector, and everything with it. Seems plausible as I had an old Tahoe with a bad battery that would suddenly die. Took them a week to figure out because the battery was new. Sounds like a similar situation here where the electrical loop was shorted and screwed everything. He said total fluke though.
 
#5 ·
heard this happening to a few of the WK owners, everything just shuts off. NOT FUN, when you're going 80+ on the freeway.
 
#6 ·
Happens ocassionally on my Wk, had it happen last week. Everything shuts off except the electrical stuff. My engine, power steering etc. all just stop and if I have the radio going I normally have no idea until I lose the power steering and acceleration.
 
#7 ·
I have a friend with a WK as well that his does this sometimes. All the gauges go haywire, HVAC shuts down, then his will actually come back to life within a couple of seconds. I have been in the car when this has happened and it is weird. Its hard to find the cause of the problem if no codes are stored.
 
#9 ·
Maybe a little bit off topic, I went to a car wash Saturday morning and they refuse to take my 11 overland because the owner was concerned about V8 Grand cherokees going crazy inside the car wash bay. Supposedly somebody died in a car wash accident because the transmission went into drive by itself and WOT.

I was shocked. Does anybody knows anything?
 
#12 ·
The 1997 movie starring Kurt Russell called "Breakdown" features a WJ generation jeep that break down b/c of an electrical problem that shuts everything down. He fixes it eventually by plugging a wire back in near the front of the car hahaha! That's funny.


Seriously though, what is the deal with these problems? This doesn't make me feel good about eventually buying a WK2 Jeep. I expect this thing to go 100,000+ miles, and expect American manufacturers have gotten it right.
 
#15 ·
I used to own a Ford Taurus SHO that used to die like that. Turned out there was a hairline crack in the cam sensor and everytime it got to a certain temp it would expand just enough to throw off the timing and kill the engine. Then you had to wait for it to cool down which at some times took an hour or so. What a pain. No codes were ever thrown, and it took the dealer about 6 months to find the problem.
 
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