Mark: Hi, it's Mark from Top Local. We're here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, 18-time winners of Best Auto Repair in Vancouver as voted by their customers. How are you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Doing very well.
Mark: We're talking about is 2005 Grand Cherokee. What was going on with this off-road vehicle?
Bernie: Well the vehicle was towed to our shop with a no start condition and the engine wouldn't crank over, which we determined to be the starter motor and we replaced. It was also brought to us ... It was overdue for a maintenance service so we did our B service, which is an oil change, this includes an oil and filter change and a full vehicle comprehensive inspection.
Mark: And what did the inspection find?
Bernie: A few interesting things, but the one thing that I wanted to share and that is an air filter that is dirtier than any air filter I'd ever seen in my life. We'll just get straight to pictures here because this I pretty cool to look at. Actually I'm going to start with ... this is the air filter in the vehicle after it was cleaned. This is a K&N air filter. It's a reusable filter, supposedly a lower air restriction than a regular paper filter, and it's reusable. After a while, it gets dirty. You clean it with a special cleaner and you can apply a special oil film to it, and that does all your filtering. It basically lasts ... It's a lifetime type of filter.
You can see, that's what the new clean filter looks like. Let's have a look at what we found, and that was this. Absolutely covered with a huge, thick layer of dirt. That's a close-up view of it. It's so thick, I honestly don't even know this engine was running with a filter this dirty, but somehow, it was. That's our air filter.
Mark: Were there any other pressing services on this vehicle?
Bernie: There was a couple other things. Ball joints were worn out. We replaced those. Also, the engine coolant, which actually I'll just re-share another photo while I'm at it here. The radiator cap, you can see there's a lot of rust and corrosion around this cap, so the cooling system was well overdue for a flush. Fortunately for the owner ... There was a lot of rust on the cap, which looked very concerning, but fortunately, the rest of the cooling system wasn't ... The coolant wasn't so badly rusted. But once it gets really badly rusted, it's impossible to get rid of, so it's a condition you want to avoid by making sure you have proper antifreeze concentrations and you do flush your cooling system.
It doesn't happen as much as it used to in the past, but we do see it now and again. Any engine that has a metal steel block or cast block will be prone to rusting. We did a cooling system flush as well.
Mark: How is the 5.7 litre engine in this vehicle?
Bernie: They're pretty good. I think they're one of the better choices in these vehicles. We do talk a lot ... We've done a lot of these hang-outs on Grand Cherokees with diesels. We do work on a lot of them, but the 4.7s and 3.7s are also popular. In the older generations, the 4 litre straight six, but the 5.7 is a good option. The only thing is it's a pretty large engine. It's got lots of power, but it's large, so you're going to use a lot of fuel. That's probably the downside to this engine. Other than that, it's pretty reliable and powerful.
Mark: With that engine being that dirty, do you think that was a factor of being off-road a lot, or was it just not serviced often enough?
Bernie: It was entirely off-road. This vehicle had a lot of dirt on it, which is great to see, because so many people buy these vehicles and they only ever see pavement, but that's the nice thing about owning a Jeep or a Grand Cherokee. It's a really good off-road vehicle. Yeah, no, this thing was used very well off-road and that's exactly ... You'd never get that kind of dirt. You'd have to drive maybe a million kilometres in the city to ever see that level of dirt. That's all off-road. Very dusty roads. The interesting thing is it's actually, right now, it's fall and winter time in Vancouver. It's been raining and wet for quite a long time, so that kind of dust ... It must have been on there, since summertime when the roads were ... There was a lot of dust on ... I imagine he drove on a lot of logging roads where he was getting a lot of dust. That filter's probably been dirty for quite a while. I'm not even sure how the engine ran. It's probably got another 50 horsepower after we cleaned the filter.
Mark: So, there you go. If you're looking for service for your Jeep Grand Cherokee or any model of Jeep, the guys to see in Vancouver are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at (604)327-7112 or check out their website, pawlikautomotive.com, or our YouTube channel, Pawlik Auto Repair. Thanks, Bernie.
Bernie: Thanks, Mark.
