Can anyone PLEASE recommend an engineer on Phuket who deals solely with army style jeeps, wyllis, J4s. My jeep's currently parked outside my house, the steering deciding to stall when trying to go in any direction but straight on (not helpful), after having been towed off to a basic auto engineer and pronouced it 'only needed some jarabee'(grease). All and any suggestions would be heartfeltfully welcome.

I am not an mechanic but I know a heck of a lot of them. Back in the states. How handy with a wrench are you? If you feel you can follow directions and get greasy. I will put out the call for help. We all love jeeps.

What year J4 is it?

Can you give a little more details on the problem?

Also a little history would help.

I don?t know any mechanics in Phuket I can talk to some of my friends here in Bkk to see if they have any connections.

Oh one last silly question did you try the grease? Sounds more like a tooth in the steering box broke or something is really lose. If you can?t find a Jeep engineer/mechanic that knows about manual steering boxes. You might try a farm equipment mechanic. A manual steering box is not that hard to work with if you have seen one you have seen a few.

Good luck

jitagon; you didn't give much info,but some of the answers were good,,do you know anything about mechanics? what are the symptoms? can you turn the steering wheel at all? and if so will it turn the front wheels? is all the linkage still hooked together?tell me what it does or doesn't do and I can give you some pointers and would gladly come and help you fix it,but I live 375 klicks north of BKK.

Thankyou both for your replies. Just as I was about to trade it in for a nice little Vitara up the road, was put on to a garage by a Thai friend and they actually know what they're talking about, fixed it up enough to get me over the holiday period and will be returning next week to have the steering re modelled (installed inside) next week. I'd had it greased by yet another 'engineer' in town after having shelled out for a tow truck, and that was only three days before it seized up again. Really I think some of them see us coming and I think the fact I was put on to it by a Thai helped a lot. Thanks again.

couple of guys in Krabi fix those things. dont know the address, sorry. ask about, you may get lucky.

Thankyou both for your replies. Just as I was about to trade it in for a nice little Vitara up the road, was put on to a garage by a Thai friend and they actually know what they're talking about, fixed it up enough to get me over the holiday period and will be returning next week to have the steering re modelled (installed inside) next week. I'd had it greased by yet another 'engineer' in town after having shelled out for a tow truck, and that was only three days before it seized up again. Really I think some of them see us coming and I think the fact I was put on to it by a Thai helped a lot. Thanks again.

I have a Grand Vitara and would say do not buy one. Worse piece of junk I ever drove.

It only has 35K on it, which 6K was driven by me in the last 3 years. Turn the aircon on and you might as well get out and push it. This is with the 1.8 litre engine I believe but it could pass as a 1.2 litre LADA.