AtWhatMileage
Brakes · 5 owner reports

Loss of braking on the 2012 Jeep Wrangler

Only 4 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 5
With an odometer reading 4
Reports per 1,000 built 0.0 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 75%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $400–$3,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 39th

When loss of braking gets reported

There are 5 reports of loss of braking on the 2012 Jeep Wrangler, 4 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 78,000 miles. It is the 39th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 4 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 7,650 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $400–$3,000 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2018, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 1997 at 75,000 miles.

By volume the 2008 carries the most reports, with 9; the 2012 has 5. 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 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 77k
  2. 2001 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 2004 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 63k
  4. 2007 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 73k
  5. 2008 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 58k
  6. 2009 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 41k
  7. 2010 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 65k
  8. 2011 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking
    no odometer readings given
    —
  9. 2012 (this one) 8k
  10. 2013 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 12k
  11. 2015 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 40k
  12. 2016 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 40k
  13. 2017 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 17k
  14. 2018 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking 7k
  15. 2019 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking
    no odometer readings given
    —
  16. 2020 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking
    no odometer readings given
    —
  17. 2021 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking
    no odometer readings given
    —
  18. 2022 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking
    no odometer readings given
    —
  19. 2024 Jeep Wrangler loss of braking
    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

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Tl* the contact owns a 2012 jeep wrangler. The contact stated that while driving at various speeds, the vehicle started to make a loud noise whenever the brakes were engaged. The vehicle was taken to the dealer where the technician diagnosed that the rotors needed to be resurfaced. In addition, the contact received notification of NHTSA campaign number: 13v234000 (power train, steering) and she was concerned for her safety since the parts were still not available. The dealer was contacted. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The vehicle was not repaired for the brake failure. The vehicle has not experience the failure specified in the recall. The failure mileage was 300 and the current mileage was 25,000.

300 miles NHTSA complaint 1047057 filed 2014-03-18

Tl* the contact owns a 2012 jeep wrangler. The contact stated that while driving at various speeds, the vehicle started to make a loud noise whenever the brakes were engaged. The vehicle was taken to the dealer where the technician diagnosed that the rotors needed to be resurfaced. In addition, the contact received notification of NHTSA campaign number: 13v234000 (power train, steering) and she was concerned for her safety since the parts were still not available. The dealer was contacted. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The vehicle was not repaired for the brake failure. The vehicle has not experience the failure specified in the recall. The failure mileage was 300 and the current mileage was 25,000.

300 miles NHTSA complaint 1047058 filed 2014-03-18

Engine brakes and vehicle slows down momentarily for about 1-2 seconds then recovers. This has happened at least 6-7 times. At least one of these times the skid warning comes up but this happens on a freeway in dry conditions traveling in a straight line no brakes were applied by driver. *tr

15,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1152362 filed 2015-01-29

Also reported on the 2012 Jeep Wrangler

Other powertrain problem

260 reports median 16k

Other steering problem

184 reports median 24k

Other engine problem

111 reports median 30k

Other electrical problem

80 reports median 47k

Airbag inflator rupture

34 reports median 47k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 5 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 5 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.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does loss of braking happen on the 2012 Jeep Wrangler?

Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is loss of braking on the 2012 Jeep Wrangler?

5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

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