2007 Jeep Patr-idiot AWD Build/Repair

With winter rapidly approaching and my having only two-wheeled means of transportation that could truly be relied upon, I had been keeping my eye out for a winter beater for a while. I had looked at several vehicles that truly fit the description of a beater, but SWMBO- for whom this vehicle would be a backup if anything went wrong with hers (and I was also leaning toward AWD/4WD so she'd have it if we get really bad snows) was really not happy with anything that solidly a 'beater'.

So a bit over a week ago I came across a listing for a 2007 Jeep Patriot AWD that was listed for only $2000- it stood out because my Craigslist filter by price usually doesn't get much of anything newer than 2002 or so (and those are usually wrecked). It looked to be in rather good shape inside and out and was described as having a leaking power steering pump, a cracked exhaust manifold, and really bad tires. I went out to look at it ASAP over lunch from work (which is where part of my problems came from), looked it over (but didn't poke around REALLY extensively since I was in nicer office clothes...) and after test driving it decided to buy it. The seller wouldn't budge on the price, but the blue book for it in decent condition pushes twice what the asking price was so I didn't have too many complaints.

When I got it home I started looking at things a lot more closely. The manifold would need to be replaced- somebody had tried repairing it before and it didn't look like it would be possible to do much further. There was some bubbling paint on the rear passenger side wheel well and door bottom, so I decided that I'd grind out the rust and do something like plasti-dip the lower half of the car to seal it up instead of trying to paint it and match the paint properly. I tracked down and bought a set of nicer alloy wheels with far better tires on them the evening I bought the car, and after opening up the centers enough to fit over the Jeep's hubs. In doing this I also poked around to try and figure out whether the bad clunking I'd heard from the front end when I test drove it was shocks or, as I suspected, a stabilizer bar end link since this was what had been causing a similar (but not as bad) noise from SWMBO's SUV.

It was in investigating this that I found that I REALLY should have taken a much closer look before I bought it, because I found that the front subframe was rusted completely through and the driver's side stabilizer bar bushing mount was rusted free of the subframe and just flopping around. Some googling found that the subframes on the early Patriots/Calibers/etc. had HORRIBLE steel and coatings and just rusted like they were submerged in salt water. Had I gotten down and looked remotely closely at the subframe this would have been VERY obvious, and I would likely have not bought the thing because I was looking for something that I could just drive and not have to do massive repairs on to be able to use.

The good news is that even with what these things will cost, since I'm fixing them myself I should still end up spending less than if I'd bought one in a similar apparent condition but without any mechanical issues.

Here's the Jeep with the new wheels & tires on it:

Here's a photoshop mock-up I did of what I want to do with flat-black plasti-dip on the body & wheels:

Here's the busted subframe stabilizer mount:

Things that need to be done:

-Replace the front subframe (ordered, arriving next Thursday)

-Replace the exhaust manifold (arrived today)

-Grind down the rust and plastidip the car (have the dip & what I should need to mask it off)

-Figure out if it is the PS pump that's leaking something- I'm not wholly convinced, but whatever it is isn't leaking a whole lot

-It's throwing a code for something in the intake, an actuator, so I need to track that down too

-Track down a jack for it, it was missing the spare and jack but I already tracked down a spare (donut)

Well good luck. I've always liked the Patriots looks, but I have always heard both positive and negative things about them.

Is this one a manual trans (relaible) or a CVT (unreliable)?

In reply to JohnRW1621:

For better or worse, it's an auto/cvt- SWMBO can't drive a stick and it's supposed to be a backup vehicle for her....

Since I can't do much until the new subframe comes in and I wasn't figuring on having enough time to do all of the work to do the full plasti-dipping, I spent the morning working on a few smaller, less critical projects.

The drivers side front speaker was far weaker than the others, so I pulled both front speakers and tested the weak one on the other side and found that it was still weak, so I swapped in a new pair of 3-way 6x9s which both work far better.

I also figured (correctly) that I had time to take care of blacking out the emblems and tinting the tail lights. Both turned out quite well and I think will look quite good.

Here's the rear end masked off for spraying:

Here's the rear end before doing anything:

Here it is afterwards:

I also started masking the 'PATRIOT' emblem so hopefully when I spray the rear number I can keep the logo gold for contrast.

I also tested out masking the fender flare with the 1/2" tape- it will work quite well I think....

Paint those wheels a single, solid color. That black with a machined face is not doing that thing any favors.

Spoolpigeon wrote: Paint those wheels a single, solid color. That black with a machined face is not doing that thing any favors.

That's the plan- I'll be putting flat black plastidip over them the same as the lower half of the car.

My rule has always been that for every bit of rust you can see, there's 5X as much that you can't. I have learned that through hard experience, unfortunately.

It sounds like you should be able to get a season of reliable transportation out of this thing, at which point you can probably sell it for a small gain. I'd call that a win.

From my experience it's very difficult to cut the dried dip with a razor blade. I've had the best results from pulling the masking off while the dip is still wet. Trying to pull the masking off after it cures results in pulling the dip along with it.

My technique when spraying a large area against a masked off area was to spray all the coats necessary on the large area while keeping away from the actual mask line. Then on the last coat, lay it on thick and heavy over the masking, and pull the masking off immediately before it dries. Plasti does an amazing job of blending as it cures.

Maybe do some test panels on cardboard or something to get the technique down before spraying the vehicle to save material and frustration.

In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:

That's exactly how they say on DYC to handle doing an edge like this- to make sure and pull off the tape before the last layer you put on dries. I'm planning on doing it a few panels at a time to try and get it right. Nice thing is it's easy to do over!

So I had time after we got back from the Gorge yesterday to spray the dip on both sides of the Jeep.

The driver's side I did first, and didn't quite get the technique right and got a very uneven and jagged line as it kept wanting to pull up.

I'm not convinced it's hopeless and that I have to pull it all off and do it over- I think I should be able to mask the line again with the thin tape (I didn't get it quite where it should have been anyway) and spray another very heavy coat of the dip over the thin tape and then pull it off while it's wet- that should give me the more straight line and lock down the existing edge, and then just peel off the dip from the other side of the tape.

The passenger side I learned from my mistakes on the driver's side and it worked far better. The only real problems are that I was scrambling to pull off the tape & such and smudged the dip in a few places. I should be able to fill those in easily enough though. I don't have a picture of it, but I also got the first of the wheels done. The wheels look INFINITELY better in flat black than the two-tone they are naturally.

The emblems also look really nice blacked out- I have half a mind to see if I can make some extra money on the side blacking out/changing the colors of emblems on people's cars for $20-25 a pop since it works so well and is easy to do.

I'm hoping I'll have time this evening to do another of the wheels and either the front or rear bumper- they should be much easier since neither will really require the line-masking that the sides did (though the rear I have the embossed 'PATRIOT' emblem covered in tape and hope to be able to pull off and have in contrasting gold to the flat black...).

The replacement subframe is supposed to show up on Thursday, so I need to start getting things pulled off and supported to be able to remove the old one and swap in the new one. I will be REALLY happy to have that done and be able to drive this thing...

If you have the time try this on the drivers side. Mask the damaged areas again, real close to the dip. Pick up some VM&P Naptha, dip a gloved finger in it and rub the jagged pulled part of the dip. it will soften the dip and you can smooth the edge out with your finger prior to the new layer. Be careful not to drip any on the rest of the dip, it'll eat right through it. Let that dry then re-mask and spray. It'll look a lot better than just trying to spray over, those jagged lines will likely show through.

In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:

I'll have to give that a try, thanks!

To my surprise, yesterday afternoon the new subframe showed up, 2 days early. Since the weather is supposed to be nice for the next 2 days, I'm planning on taking the afternoons off to try and get the subframe swapped out, finish with the plastidip, and get the new exhaust manifold swapped in (and hopefully resolve the intake runner valve issue as well).

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I want to just replace the front struts & springs while I have the front end apart- I already have the replacement loaded struts from before I realized that they weren't the major problem, and I'll have to largely unhook the existing ones anyway- but it would be nice to be able to return them and get the $130 back. But, having new struts would be a nice thing to be able to say when I go to sell it down the line.

In reply to Ashyukun:

Just do it now, you know it'll come back to bite you in the middle of winter if you don't...

In reply to petegossett:

That is the way I'm leaning. I do worry a bit that I'll get into it and find that there are other issues (the control arm bushings are the first thing that comes to mind), but I'll have to cross that bridge when I get to it. It will suck though to get it all apart and ready to put back together and find that I need to replace the control arms or their bushings- and have to either spend 4x as much to get the parts locally or wait a day or two for them to be delivered. I hate having to do everything so quickly...

So, something unexpected (and kind of annoying) happened yesterday- the original, used subframe I'd ordered and was reported by Amazon as having been returned to the seller showed up on my doorstep. So now I have two subframes. I'm in the process of working out with Amazon to send the original, used one back.

Took yesterday afternoon off as planned, and after about 5 hours of work was able to get the old subframe and the cracked exhaust manifold off of the car. The subframe was considerably more troublesome than the Youtube video I watched on it would have indicated, at least in part due to the fact that the video was on a FWD Caliber and not an AWD Patriot- the AWD apparently has an additional engine/trans bracket that is a BITCH to get off and has to come off in order to get the steering rack bolts out.

Here's the original subframe, shown with the stabilizer bar (which I'm going to need to sand down an paint as well as replacing the end links):

Here's the exhaust manifold- the attempted repairs to it are pretty bad:

The order of the day this afternoon will of course be to put the new manifold (or rather, 'maniverter' as it appears to be called since it has an integrated cat) and subframe back onto the car. There are a few things to be done first... there's a very slow coolant drip that I've been noticing that I need to track down the origin of, so I need to figure that out. I also need to swap the front struts, but I'm not sure if I want to do that before or after I get the subframe back in (since right now the front suspension is essentially hanging from the struts).

I also got the other front wheel plastidipped, and the wheels look MUCH better in flat black than the silver/black they are without it. This is the first one I did, but the other of course looks identical:

With some luck I'll have time this afternoon to finish up the plastidip on the Jeep itself and the rear wheels (and if it's not too much of a hassle the rear shocks too). If so, the car should finally be good and ready for me to actually drive it!

That maniverter thing looks ridiculous. Is it cracked from thermal cycling or was it rust perforated too?

WOW that subframe is rotted. I wouldn't expect that from a 9 year old vehicle. Was this Patriot from Michigan?

From reading up on it, the maniverters were made cheaply and commonly crack along the seams. Makes me glad that the cheapest replacement one wasn't OEM and was from Pacesetter.

They really screwed the pooch with the subframes (front and rear) on the original Patriot/Liberty/Calibers. I don't know exactly where my Patriot has lived most of its life, but the subframe failing like that is apparently VERY common. Hopefully the new one is one of the newer-built ones that should be better (or at least good for another 10 years).

An interesting thing I found in swapping them- apparently SOMEBODY knew about the stab bar problem because someone had rigged up a bracket that held it somewhat in place using a longer bolt to hold the PITA AWD rear brace. It looked like it had been there for a while so I'm assuming that the guy I bought it from didn't do it. It didn't seem to really be doing THAT much, but I imagine the bar would have banged around even worse without it.

I'd consider masking off along the body line of the front and rear fascias and continuing the plasti-dip to complete the wheel arch. The two-tone looks amazing, though.

That is a pretty crazy amount of rust, though.

In reply to wae:

The plan is to do the front and rear, I actually got the rear done this afternoon even though I couldn't get good pictures in the dark...

The contrasting Patriot logo needs some touching up though...

I didn't pull the tape off quick enough and it dried and pulled off the dip.

I'm going to hold off on the front until I'm done under the hood so I'm not rubbing up against it while working on installing the new maniverter.

Took longer than I'd hoped, but the new subframe is installed.

Unfortunately the exhaust gasket between the maniverter and the rear cat pipe isn't available from any parts stores within 150 miles, so I've got to wait for Amazon to get it to me.

I'm thinking I'll take tomorrow afternoon off too and get the struts swapped and the rear wheels dipped. I'll get everything I can done to minimize how much time I have to work in the cold we're supposed to be getting by the time that gasket I need arrives.

Took yesterday afternoon off to try and get everything possible I could before the weather turned much colder over night taken care of.

One of the things that needed to be done was to drain the coolant so I could pull the thermostat/distribution hub that was apparently leaking and needed to come out in order to get the maniverter back in. In their infinite wisdom, the engineers that built this thing made it nearly impossible to get to the radiator drain petcock with the front grill/bumper cover/fascia on the car- but at least they also made it rather easy to remove. Which helped me elsewhere too, in that I could be spraying it while it was off the car and working under the hood at the same time.

Here's the fascia after a few coats:

It's interesting how much the front of the Jeep without the grill/bumper looks like a classic scifi/horror robot without its face...

Overall, the afternoon went well and the Jeep is as far along as I can get it without the parts I'm waiting for. I replaced all 4 struts/shocks- the rears were FAR more of a pain than the front were. I just need the new stab bar end links which should show up in a few hours. I got the two rear wheels dipped to matte black. The maniverter is back in place, but can't be actually bolted up until the unicorn gasket shows up.

The car had been throwing a code for the intake runners being stuck open, so I pulled the actuator and hopefully have unstuck it so I don't have to spend another $80 replacing it too. I also changed the oil.

Hopefully once the remaining parts (new thermostat housing & heater hoses, maniverter gasket, and stab bar end links) are here it should take me only an hour or so to get everything back together and the car finally drivable.

The passenger rear window wasn't rolling down, but I haven't looked into whether that's the main switch on the driver's door or the motor itself. Either way, I don't intend to worry about that for the time being- I can live with one back window not working over the winter.

Great job thus far.