Yesterday morning I mentioned to my roommate that his 2017 75th anniversary edition Wrangler unlimited was leaking all over the garage floor – which prompted an hour of helping him figure out what was leaking… Some PCV hose at the back of the intake manifold that requires a contortionist with really small hands to get to had come apart and was blowing oil all over back there.
See, the V6 “Pentastar” that runs the average newer Jeep is installed with a gallon of KY and a shoe horn. It’s such a tight fit that you have to essentially take the upper half of the engine off to change the spark plugs – and this virtually inaccessible problem at the back of the intake was just the latest in a long line of frustrations with this Jeep: it’s underpowered, poorly geared, rides like a paint shaker, has no real amenities outside of the stuff he’s installed over the years, and it’s also a pain in the butt to work on.
This led to yet another discussion about him wanting a truck – something Dodge with a similar drive train to my 300 so we can buy bulk oil, filters, brake pads, etc (and he can use my cast-off parts as I upgrade things) – but not wanting to go into debt for another decade just to get one… And there was the worry that a truck wouldn’t fit into our 1.75 car garage because even the small 1500 is like 20 feet long…
And that led to me mentioning a local used truck dealership that I’d shopped in the past, Berkenkotter, which got really good reviews, and pulling them up on my computer to show him what they had.
The first truck was what he needed but wasn’t what he wanted. So I dug around a bit more and found a 2019 Dodge Ram “Rebel” 4WD with the 5.7L Hemi in it for a decent price. So off we went to go look at it.
The first stop was the dealership I knew about, which is right next door to a BBQ place I like in Parker – Hickory House. Unfortunately the truck wasn’t at this location and we were sent to Castle Rock to the other location.
And unknown to us there are actually two Berkenkotter dealerships in Castle Rock, and Siri sent us to the wrong one… So back in the Jeep and five blocks north to the right location.
We got there and I practically took the truck apart right there in the parking lot to check it out – and everything seemed okay. It’s a 2019 with about 38,000 miles on it, and I know the drivetrain when properly looked after can go a quarter million miles without issue.
So the roomie got the keys and took the thing for a spin while I stayed behind, and he returned with a huge grin… The 5.7L V8 compared to the Pentastar is a completely different animal.
Anyway, the dealership offered him $4k more than he owed on the Jeep, which was used as the down on the truck and taking its cost to about $30k, and after taking everything out of the Jeep and depositing it on the floorboard in front of the rear driver’s side passenger seat, he drove it home.
The truck needed air in the tires and was on fumes, so we stopped just up the road at a 7-11 to fix this… $120 later the tank was full and the tires at 55psi.
All in all the truck is in pretty nice shape. I ran the Carfax on it and it was $51k new and a rental in Utah for the first 5 months of its life – which was also 13,000 of the 38,000 miles. From there it was auctioned off and picked up by Larry H Miller, brought to Denver, and sold to someone who put the rest of the miles on it before trading it in for something else.
It’s definitely “used” and has the dings and scratches of a work truck, but mechanically it’s in good shape. It needed the front sway bar links re-torqued, as all of these trucks do, which was what we did this morning.
Then the roomie took the truck over and got it washed right after lunch, so it doesn’t look quite as homely now:
The thing I find most interesting about the truck is just how much storage it has… There are cubbies everywhere; in the rear floorboards, under the seats, in the doors – there are even two gloveboxes and the center console probably holds ten gallons of stuff. Perfect for my packrat roommate.
It also has a really nice interior:
The stereo sounds good and the space radio service is still running, so we’ve had the ’80’s on 8′ station running for the last two days. The truck needs new tires and the pre-requisite oil change; the Hemis are really oil sensitive and who knows when the last one was done, so it’s important.
The roomie also wants to add a hard cover to the bed, remote start, and the 8.4″ uConnect touch screen to it, which is about three grand, but otherwise he seems rather happy with the thing.
The down-side – because there’s always a down-side – is the truck is two inches too long to fit in the garage. This means the roomie has been relegated to visitor parking a hundred yards from the house and my 300 now has the garage to itself… Which I can certainly live with, but it’s not optimal.
We’ll figure out something eventually.
Listening to "Go" by WOLFCLUB