AtWhatMileage
Transmission · 2 owner reports

Complete transmission failure on the 1997 Jeep Wrangler

Only 0 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 2
With an odometer reading 0
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $2,800–$8,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 36th

When complete transmission failure gets reported

There are 2 reports of complete transmission failure on the 1997 Jeep Wrangler. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

It is the 36th most-reported problem on this model year.

None of these reports included an odometer reading, so there is no mileage distribution to show. NHTSA's form does not require the field.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $2,800–$8,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 11 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2017, at a median of 500 miles, and latest on the 2007 at 155,000 miles.

By volume the 2000 carries the most reports, with 14; the 1997 has 0. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1997 (this one)
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1998 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 2000 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 17k
  4. 2001 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  5. 2003 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 4k
  6. 2004 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 163k
  7. 2005 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 75k
  8. 2007 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 156k
  9. 2008 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 57k
  10. 2009 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 51k
  11. 2010 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 10k
  12. 2011 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 69k
  13. 2012 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  14. 2013 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  15. 2014 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  16. 2015 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  17. 2016 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 15k
  18. 2017 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 500
  19. 2018 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 8k
  20. 2019 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 45k
  21. 2020 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  22. 2021 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 31k
  23. 2022 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 55k
  24. 2023 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 20k
  25. 2024 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure 122k
  26. 2025 Jeep Wrangler complete transmission failure
    no odometer readings given
    —

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

Also reported on the 1997 Jeep Wrangler

Exhaust leak or fumes in the cabin

50 reports median 55k

Other body or interior problem

37 reports median 85k

Fuel pump failure

22 reports median 74k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 2 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 2 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed