Today's performance suvs follow a very simple recipe: take the engine and drive train from your fastest car. Stick it in an existing suv, change up the interior and exterior styling a little, and just like that. You have a proven performer in one of the fastest selling automotive segments. There is now, after blasting to 60 in 3.5 seconds in a new audi rsq8.

I got to thinking about how we've arrived here. There are so many fast suvs today. What started this trend, and who do we have to thank some might say. The gmc typhoon in the early 90s was the first performance, suv and i'd agree, except they designed a very special engine specifically for the typhoon and its brother, the cyclone pickup.

It only had two doors and was very rare and short-lived. I dream of owning one, but i don't believe that was the beginning of what we see today. But five years after the typhoon was put to rest, jeep decided to do something special with the first generation zj grand cherokee, that was in its final year of production. Chrysler who owned dodge and jeep at the time didn't have an engine to steal from a performance car outside of the viper, so they borrowed an engine from their full-size ram, pickup and so was born.

The 5.9 liter jeep grand cherokee limited the magnum v8 produced 245 horsepower 345 foot-pounds of torque and the all-wheel drive jeep would sprint to 60 in just 6.8 seconds. The 5 9 ran the quarter mile in 15.2 seconds and was named the fastest and quickest suv at the time in the world and to put that into perspective, that's about the same 0 to 60 and quarter mile time of the same year, mustang gt. So this was dropped off last night kind of far away from my garage. I bought one sight unseen from an auction for 750 bucks.

It doesn't run and it was delivered to my house yesterday. So i it was like midnight when it came in. I saw it right after work when i got home and uh yeah, you guys saw it in the b-roll. That's pretty much all i've seen so in traditional legit streetcars fashion.

We are going to examine this entire car for the first time together and we're gon na. Try and get it running so when you buy these non-runners from the auction, it could be a battery. It could be a locked motor i've seen literally both on this channel and so we're gon na hope that the bulletproof engine, these 5.9 liters are really strong. We're gon na hope that it's okay, it's only got 119 000 miles on it, so uh.

I am going to pop this thing into neutral and then i finally get to use my ml55 winch. The remote for the winch is pretty awesome. We have a flat tire, so this would be a bear to try and push it more towards the garage where i have tools. That's what i'm going after here, so we're gon na go in and let's see yes, i know you reel off rotors out there, like.

What's the big deal, it's just a winch! Well, i've never had one before okay, so leave me alone got the ml running and this is sweet. This is so nice i'm going to wrap this up kind of evenly. Here it's looking pretty good, so this is actually really fitting, because my ml55 is a 2000, which is what i believe stole the crown from the 5.9 liter jeep as the fastest suv in the world. So now i own two of the former fastest suvs in the world that aren't really all that fast anymore, alright guys so, let's start exploring this jeep for the first time together.

I live for this kind of stuff. I love buying cheap cars from the auction side. Unseen and just seeing what we got alright, it's not that big of a gamble, although this one is a no start, and typically the auction house will at least try to jump start it because they can list it as a runner or a run and drive and Get a lot more money, so it's probably not just gon na, be the fact that it has a dead battery. But you never know we could get lucky.

So there is our engine we're going to first check over the fluids, see if it turns over, but i just want to take a peek at this interior, because that is an important part of the vehicle 119 000 miles. And it looks pretty good outside of the rip in the driver's seat. We have some sunroof trim, that's falling off there and i just want to see what's going on with this stain, it doesn't smell or anything, i'm not like worried about anything kind of gory. I think this might be like some kind of paint or polyurethane or something like that, a stain, possibly uh, let's check out the back whoa.

Those are like the best shocks ever all right, so kind of gross in here. Oh, i wonder if this is a full-size spare with the same five spoke. That would be awesome and yeah. This is pretty gross, not gon na lie.

I don't know if this is stain or if it's oil kind of might look like oil and what is going on here. Okay, all right! What is that? Oh guys, guys that is like a big bag of okay? All right, i got to get some gloves. I don't know what is going on in there again it doesn't smell, so i don't think it's anything gross like a dead animal but there's a bag of mush. What is going on in here? Oh geez, i don't know, i don't know guys all right, i'm i got to get some gloves on, but before that there is a big upswing on a car like this, so i paid 750 bucks with shipping and fees.

It was like about 1400 to my door. I'm into this 1400, but these things sell for big money in good condition. These are the original auction pictures. This is all i had to go off of before i purchased mine, except i had the help of my little secret weapon, auto auctions, dot io, and it is a phenomenal tool for research to make sure you get a good deal and you can find all your Auction cars here as well, so i knew right off the bat that this was a clean title and this is huge, comparable vehicles.

So if you guys aren't sure how much you should spend on a car go to this website and it gets way better all right. So because of autoauctions.io, we know that this 2019 corvette just sold for 24 thousand dollars. It does have a salvage title, but this corvette is on ebay. Right now same corvette still has a salvage title.

They spiffed it up a little bit with a new windshield gave it a wash some tire shine. It's 32 000. Now, but let's say you don't really care, you don't buy auction cars. You only buy nice clean title cars like this tesla here it looks absolutely perfect.

Doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with it. It actually has a clean title as well, and it's commanding clean title money here. It is just a couple months ago it was in a pretty decent rack, it sold for 45 000 and somehow it retained a clean title. I'm gon na leave my link and coupon code down below in the description box.

This is going to save you money and get you free reports and you can search the vin of a car that you want to buy for free to see. If there's even a report available for you anyway link and code down below, i got my gloves on so, let's hope there's nothing really gross in that bag. All right, i uh. I usually don't get grossed out easily.

So this, oh, what in the world? What in the world is this? What in the world? Oh? No, what it's? Oh, it's got to be engine oil and mud. It's it's guys! I'm! You know i it's nothing that smells it's nothing that smells all right! Oh! What is this? Oh? What is this hang on? It's just straight up mod dude, it's just straight up mud. Why did this guy save muddy oil? What in the world am i gon na find like a rod in here ew? What is this? No, it's just muddy. It's just muddy! Oil is this thing leaking all right.

I'm gon na take out these floor mats because they actually look really nice. Let's just go ahead and dump this out now that i know it's not a raccoon or something weird which would have completely destroyed the interior of this car, it would have been totaled for a biohazard. This is just straight up, muddy oil. It is muddy.

Oil really is not a, i don't understand it, i'm not gon na lie. I don't understand what's going on here, but this does not bode well for my car running, because what why why why why the only thing i can come up with is this thing was leaking so much oil on dirt and the guy didn't want to like pollute The earth, so he just scooped it all up and put it in a bag. I don't know i'm hoping that it wasn't from this, so i'm a little perplexed as you can tell, but anyway, let's move on. Let's move on we're gon na go see if this engine turns over we'll check the oil, hopefully there's some oil and uh.

This is another one for the books, guys i don't know what to say and uh they got white castle. Maybe god i used to get this at like three o'clock in the morning when i just wanted a little snack and it was pretty gross, especially how i felt the next day. I kind of felt like this this little mush moment of truth. Here, please have oil.

I didn't see a huge puddle underneath well unless it all leaked out into that field. According to my theory, let's see here, oh yeah, we got oil. We got a lot of oil yeah, someone really overfilled this and there is no puddle here. It's sat overnight.

So let's take a peek underneath well so far so good, i don't really see anything pouring out. Let's see if we get a good look at the oil pan, all right, there's our oil pan doesn't have a hole in it. Yeah nothing! This thing really doesn't even leak. The oil pan's been done.

We got a little minor seepage there, but overall we're looking pretty good. There's the transmission pan looks decent. Okay, let's see if the engine spins will this engine turn. I have big bertha.

It is a 32 millimeter or something close to that to turn the crank bolt in i'm. Just gon na go ahead and say this now, i'm probably gon na jinx myself, okay knock on radiator hose, but if this thing turns, i think we're gon na be good. I think this engine will eventually run these things. They just never die.

My buddy eric had one of these in high school. Look at that it turns he had one in high school. It feels good and i've never seen anything beaten down to a bloody pulp than eric's jeep. He actually still has it it just it never ever dies.

He bought it in 2003. It goes off road. It's never at anything really but wide open throttle out in fields. Just it's it's insane and uh yeah.

I don't think you can kill these engines, god, i'm totally jinxing myself. Aren't i, but this one turns it doesn't turn too easy. I think it's fine yeah all right cool, let's uh zap it with some electricity and see if we can get some fuel pressure ml is coming back for the assist here with some electricity. This battery is just totally totally dead, so we're gon na get this capacitor jumper on there as well.

This thing's pretty cool. It's actually charging right now, so it charges off of your existing battery, even if it's low um and it charges up pretty quickly and then it gives you lots of amps right at once to start even larger engines, so i'll leave a link. This is just off of amazon. I've had this for a couple years.

It works pretty well but yeah. This is almost charged and obviously we'd rather have the ml running. But i want to hear what's going on here and if you use these really there we go already. If you use these really really thick jumper cables, you don't really lose much through them and it works out really well.

So now we're just going to hit this red button see it gives you a little counter. Oh no, i got to and get my keys ah and there it goes. I don't have my key, oh because it's in the ignition, let's go ah now just clicking huh. Now we got power all right, we'll fire it up, we'll fire up the ml, give it some more juice, see if this thing's got another one in it.

Yes, it does now starter's just clicking wow. That should be more than enough power to do something, alright guys. So i've let this thing bake for about 10 minutes. I fully charged up our little capacitor jumper as well, and it just keeps on clicking so we know the engine turns.

So we know that it's not clicking because the starter can't turn the engine. I think it might just be the starter and i got underneath there and the starter looks really old. It's not new, so we're gon na go down there with a hammer and just beat on it. We do have fuel pressure check it out.

Oh yeah, we got plenty of fuel pressure and, let's see what it smells like yeah kind of a little varnish. I actually really like the smell smells good, but bad bad for the engine. Kind of should start all right guys. It's kind of hard to do this.

On the ground and film at the same time, but this is basically what i'll be doing just kind of beating on the starter. I'll do a better job. Once i put the camera down, but sometimes you can kind of revive a start or at least get one more crank out of it just by beating it with a hammer. All right, i got a bigger hammer and my neighbor is going to try and start it.

So i'll be underneath there beating on it, and it is the original starter. It's got a sticker on there. So it's possible. It's just a starter.

It's clicking, so we know it has power. So anyway, i'm gon na go beat on it all right go ahead! Oh, it did something: oh yeah, it wants to do something come on. Okay, the starter. It wants to do something.

You probably can't hear it on camera, but every once in a while, it'd be like and uh. Now it's smoking. So it's a bad starter. I'm gon na get it out of here.

We're gon na go see if that one at the store, this could be a starter guys got it get her out. Oh you got spoiled having a lift in your garage. I used to work on cars like this. All the time, though, and uh luckily, this is just about the easiest starter.

There is and uh yeah. It's probably original. Look at that chrysler corporation, so this guy is bad. Let's go get a new one, all right, i'm back with our triple tested starter! This was about 80 bucks, so our first initial investment going right into the jeep and, let's cross our fingers.

This works all right guys. The starter is in. I didn't even put my tools away, i'm so excited right now this could be it. This could be it.

It could just be a starter and my 750 dollar jeep could potentially crank over. I don't want to get too crazy ahead of myself here, but we have the jumper cables connected back to the ml and we're not even gon na try the booster pack we're just gon na go for it. We're gon na see if this thing turns over at all, as is moment of truth moment of truth. Yes, yes guys.

I know i'm a little weird right now. I still get really excited about replacing a starter on a really old jeep, that a lot of people think is a total pile of junk. This is so exciting. This thing is cranking right now, and that just goes to show you how good those jumper cables are.

The ml's not even running right now, so it's basically using the ml battery but anyway anyway, let's get to more cranking come on. Yes, yes, come on five. Nine come on five, nine! Oh it wants to go. It wants to go so bad, okay, okay, it is catching for a second and then not starting.

I think it may have something to do with the fuel, though it does smell pretty varnishy, so it just could be bad fuel. So i'm going to um i'm going to go ahead and pop off the little intake dealer right here. I can't even talk i'm so excited and we're gon na spray - some stuff in there and just see if we can get it to fire off at all um. But uh 750.59 - i i think it's gon na run.

I'm just gon na go ahead and say it right now. It's gon na run comment down below, if you think it's gon na run and then, if you think it's gon na shift or and drive, i guess it's got ta do all of that to be worth it, but i got faith all right. So i just took up the air intake. Air filter is not too horribly bad and check out the little dual butterfly throttle body right here, pretty cool, but unfortunately i don't have any starting fluid.

I don't even have any flammable brake cleaner, so unfortunately, we're not going to be able to spray anything into the throttle body right now to see if it'll fire until i run to the store which i may have to do eventually anyway. So, let's just move on to the fuel system, all right, i'm gon na check fuel pressure right now see what we got turn the key back and then turn it back on again. Oh there we go there, we go. Oh then it goes down.

Try that one more time, yeah, okay, okay, there's, probably a little bit of air in the lines there - that's uh, that's enough! That's enough to run that's for sure um! I think the fuel is just simply really bad. All right go ahead! Yep we got good spark. All right all right, that's good! That's good! So we got spark from the coil excellent all right, so i took a plug out, so we could check for spark at the plug where it really matters. I don't think there's really much of a plug left to look at the gap.

It's got to jump champion champion plugs. These could be original. The original plugs 119 000 miles, maybe but wow. That is insane.

No wonder it won't start up right now. Okay, so we got to get plugs i'll, pull some more and uh yeah this fuel's bad, but let's uh one thing at a time here: basics, people, basics - what we can do to drain out some of this bad fuel, because there's really not that much left in The tank is, we can jump the fuel pump relay so we're going to jump the 30 and 87 terminal on the fuel pump here. Oh, are you kidding me? Okay, never mind! That is the wipers all right. I messed that up fuel pumps this one not not that one.

Okay, hey guys all right. So this should be the fuel pump, see how this works. Oh yeah, you can hear it right now. Okay, stay all right, so we have it jumped over there, and here we are, the fuel is coming out.

I know it doesn't really seem like much. You know this fuel pump was putting out about 40 50 psi on the gauge, but uh yeah. Normally, it goes a little bit quicker than this. It's going through the gauge as well.

I just have a little uh purge button here, uh pressing with a zip tie, but uh yeah. This could take a while. This could definitely take a while, it's usually quicker, but i'll, take whatever we can get and uh i'm gon na go get five gallons in here as well on the way to get the spark plugs all right, guys the whole jump into the fuel pump thing. It's not really working out.

I've done this to a bunch of cars, crown vics and a lot of older stuff, and it works really well, but not in this case. So i got maybe a gallon out after roughly 10-15 minutes. I gave the pump breaks here and there, but i think it's just gon na take forever, so we're gon na do a little fuel injection cleaner, i'm gon na go get some heat. Some water, remover and uh get that in the tank as well, along with five gallons of fresh 93 because premium unleaded fuel only all right.

I picked up some new plugs, i'm gon na say these are the worst plugs i've ever seen, but they're in like the top five. While the plugs are out, we are gon na. Do a compression test, i'm not gon na test them all. I don't think.

That's a real issue, but we might as well just see what that is. What do we got? What do we got people? We got we're at a hundred, it's kind of a really weak battery. That's probably fine. Let's try another one: okay yeah! So we're at.

Like 105-ish, so basically the same thing uh. I would imagine it should be like 150, something like that 135, but nothing to worry about right now. This thing has probably been sitting forever. It's got a very weak battery right now so anyway, if it's running poorly later and we suspect a real engine issue, i could do this again, but i suspect the uh the reading is gon na be much much higher it's the next day.

I ran out of time yesterday i had to go to work, but i was able to stop at the parts store, get us some heat, five gallons of fuel, some spark plugs and some proper starting fluid just in case. We might not need it and, of course today is raining, but i don't care, i don't care we're gon na keep on going here and good till the very last drop get in there all right. That's five gallons of 93. there's no gas cap.

Okay! All right! We have some auto light: copper spark plugs 289 each. We have some rain and we have our tools. That's pretty much all you need to replace the spark plugs on one of these five nines and then you drop one yeah. Okay, where are you come here? Don't do this to me all right, it's raining.

We got ta. Do this! Quick click, click click! Let's check the gap on the new plugs all right at 45, 000. It's good and let's take a look at one of the old ones: yeah. 80.

000. So it's a little out, but i think if these were ls coils or any kind of modern individual coil on plug, it would probably still jump this, but we're talking one little baby coil for eight cylinders, not gon na happen, especially when one of the plugs looks Like this, take a look at my grass guys, you guys always ripping on my grass, oh yeah. What do you think now? Looking pretty good all right, nice, snug plug wires, all the way around brand new plugs getting excited again, all right? That's all she wrote. Yes, i am confident i'm not even going to leave this open for the starting fluid, because i think it'll fire and well honestly.

I don't have anyone to come over and help me again. So fire in the hole doesn't smell too good smells very fuelly all right guys. I had a blown fuse right here. I have no idea what it's for.

It doesn't really tell you anything. I dropped it here in the bermuda triangle of death, but i don't have any mini fuses, so i got ta steal one out of one of these cars. Those i don't believe, have any. Let's try the escalade.

No, no! No! It's got super super mini fuses. That's not gon na help. Us i got ta say youtube is an excellent resource for just about everything i didn't know where the fuses were on this and they're right here, and there is a little or a medium nowadays. 20 ampere.

Okay! Thank you all right. There. We go, don't know what that's for, let's hope, uh it's for something important that makes it start all right. Let's do this all right little! Prime now, oh i forgot to tell you guys.

I did a little bit of research on the jeep last night and i think this has been sitting for four years, which would make sense because after i got some of that fuel out of the rail, it smells really really old. So it hasn't been registered in four years and it was consistently registered every year. Obviously before then, this could still be a bad fuel issue. That's what i'm thinking right now.

We still have a ton of bad fuel in the rail and everything so starting fluid. That should definitely fix it temporarily. We're going to be replacing the fuel system with a can all right do not try this at home people. This is bad.

Don't do this, i'm a trained youtuber, all right, just a little bit there. I don't have a second guy. Just do this: let's try uh spark at the plugs spark at the plugs. We know we had it at the coil.

We got good plugs, but you never know could be a distributor issue. You know what the distributor has. The wires are all labeled, with tape like some and markers, like someone's messing with it, but they didn't do the spark plugs. So maybe they were having an issue back there.

I don't know okay, so we definitely had spark the battery was kind of weak. That's why we only had one. I didn't really crank it all that long um, but we have spark at the plug. So next i want to see if we have power going to the injectors, so we're going to use a noid light.

So all we're going to do is crank the engine over and see if this light flashes, so you guys will know before i do. I got to go back and look at the footage all right, so we have power at the injector. So, let's just go over this, we have compression, we have spark at the plug. We have power at the injector, we have fuel pressure at the rail and we've sprayed starter fluid in there, which would eliminate a fuel system really anyway, at least for a few seconds of it running uh.

We don't know if the fuel injectors themselves are working. I'd. Imagine out of eight of them at least half would work, and this thing would run a little bit um, but that is not the case. I suspect timing, it's popping and backfiring and with all of this stuff, all over the spark plug wires like, for example, this piece of tape has a four on it, but the spark plug wire says it's going to three or something it goes to a different one.

So i think something's going on with the timing. Hopefully they just messed up where the wires go. Um, it just seems odd that they wouldn't replace the plugs at the same time, so their mopar wires. They probably are original.

I don't know so we got to dig into the timing next. I really think that's the issue. I don't think the engine skipped any timing or or anything like that, i'm just i'm, i'm just being hopeful. I guess so.

I'm going to take off the distributor cap, see what we can see inside of there. This could be you know. Maybe a distributor, rotor issue cap issue could be the fuel injectors. Just are not working at all.

I can't look without taking the wires off. That's okay. I know where they all go: got ta redo this dude's labels anyway get out of here. This looks good.

This looks good. Why can't you just be bad cap and rotor? Look good darn it well guys. I sincerely hate to end the video here. I really wanted to get this five nine started.

I thought that i could but uh i got ta go to work, it's gon na start storming soon and i'm just kind of dead in the water. So a couple of things that i want to check in the next video please tune in for that one. I'm really really crossing my fingers when we get it started, but i want to pull the fuel rail up with the injectors already connected still connected and then we're going to crank it and see if it's squirting fuel and we may or may not have to remove The distributor so i'll get it to point at cylinder, one at top dead center, we'll figure out. If the distributor is installed properly and then just kind of go from there i mean compression fuel spark air, whatever that's all there.

It should work unless all six of the cylinders that i didn't check don't have compression. I don't know, i don't know we'll check that in the next video too. So anyway with that said, i hope you guys really enjoyed this little 5.9 liter jeep adventure. I hope you didn't take a shot every time i said five, nine or 5.9 liter.

Otherwise you definitely didn't make it to the end of this video. But if you like this, one give it a thumbs up share the video subscribe if you're new check in for the next jeep video and most importantly, have an awesome day i'll catch all of you in the next video and there comes a plane trying to ruin. My scene, i got it out buddy, i got it out.