Jeep TJ Lemon?

fidofab

Active Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2007
Location
china grove
Is anyone familiar with any jeep TJ's or specifically a 1998 being a lemon?

Just left the bank where I was trying to finance a jeep, with a supposedly clean title. When they ran the Carfax it came back and said total loss lemon indicator.

Strange thing is the current owner ran a Carfax a year or two ago and it wasn't on there.

Has anyone experienced this? Could it be an error? I'd really like to get this jeep.

Thanks.
 
Could the current owner be lying to you? "I don't know anything about that" so he can still sell the vehicle at full value...
 
Even if it was a lemon title, it's a 98 TJ...
Any lemon law related stuff probably would have been dealt with 15 years ago or more.

More importantly, it's a 98 TJ. They are pretty simple. I wouldn't let it bother me on a 20 year old vehicle.
 
Its been a while since Ive messed with carfax, but I think there is a simple explanation at hand.

Used to be they had like 4 levels of cars.
If there were no known issues and it had low miles it would say something like "Congrats you found a gem" we found no prior issues....blah blah blah.
Then there was Normal Car
Then there was CAUTION meaning a single wreck was there or some minor descrepancy.
Then the 4th category was "Oh No that's a lemon!" And then it would detail the findings.
I suspect carfax is using the generic its a Lemon for a total loss title not saying the vehicle was bought back under lemon law.

Even if it was that wouldn't concern me, personally.

Now, Shawn's point above...thats my bigger concern. But I suspect thats not going to be productive so rockon.
 
Thanks.
Ok ok I get it, with the financing of an old vehicle...

I was more looking for experience in understanding what carfax defines as "total loss lemon indicator".
What has to happen to get this label?
I know what a total loss is, and I know what a lemon is... but I've never come across both of those together as one label.

I'm sure it's possible the seller was being shady, but he genuinely looked as surprised as I was when the banker showed us the report.

He has also been responsive since we met, and not just disappeared like you would expect someone being shady to do.

So does anyone know what criteria carfax uses to ascribe this "Indicator"?
 
Honestly, I would expect someone shady to keep on you. He knows you are interested, and he knows you didn't cut bait at the carfax report, so now it's just a matter of how to make the deal happen. But I am a tad skeptical in my advancing years.
 
Post the vin and let NC4x4 figure out what happened ;)
 
It's not reporting what happened, its reporting what is about to happen :flipoff2:

It isn't yellow by chance is it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Nope. Not yellow.
Here's a pic in case anyone is familiar...
 

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I see that Jeep all the time at the Orange County Sportsplex in Hillsborough. Don't know the owner or the history of the Jeep.
 
fidofab said:
Thanks.
Ok ok I get it, with the financing of an old vehicle...

I was more looking for experience in understanding what carfax defines as "total loss lemon indicator".
What has to happen to get this label?
...

So does anyone know what criteria carfax uses to ascribe this "Indicator"?
Click to expand...
Just use another service to do a VIN search.
 
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