My buddie just bought a Jeep Liberty Limited Edition with 155,000miles on it for $2000. I forget what year it is, but its the older body style. Anyways, are there any known problem areas with these? He got it real cheap because it has a bit of a knock in the bottom end. hes gonna yank the engine and rebuild it. you only hear the knock when the engine is under a load, and its real fast, making me wonder if its a piston pin issue. I would think a rod knock would be heard all the time.
Jeep Liberty's
- Thread starter afoulk
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I've heard Libertys go through a lot of ball joints.
other than the aforementioned ball joints, its actually a well-built truck. very tight and very quiet. you can see the heavy Daimler influence. other than the ball joints, my 2002 with 100k has needed nothing and looks and runs like a 1 year old truck. oh, lousy gas mileage though. and the 3.7 is a slug of a motor. hard to believe that its remotely related to the very nice 4.7
Originally Posted By: afoulk
My buddie just bought a Jeep Liberty Limited Edition with 155,000miles on it for $2000. I forget what year it is, but its the older body style. Anyways, are there any known problem areas with these? He got it real cheap because it has a bit of a knock in the bottom end. hes gonna yank the engine and rebuild it. you only hear the knock when the engine is under a load, and its real fast, making me wonder if its a piston pin issue. I would think a rod knock would be heard all the time.
Older body style = KJ, newer = KK
They're solid vehicles even though they're from the Daimler [censored] years. Daimler pretty much ignored the Jeep/Truck group though, and satisfied themselves with wrecking the car division and giving us junk like the 2.7L sludge monster. By way of contrast the engines that came out of the Jeep/Truck group in the Daimler years- the 4.7, 3.7, and the Hemis, are excellent.
I'm betting you're right that a higher RPM knock is probably wrist pins, but it could be a rod bearing getting loose. He's probably doing the right thing just rebuilding it. Solid little engine, just a 4.7 less 2 cylinders, and it is slightly odd-firing like the 3.9 before it. Not a rocket ship, but reliable if taken care of. Nothing can replace the old 4.0 straight six, but the 3.7 comes close. The only thing closer is the 60-degree 3.8 in the current Wrangler.
My buddie just bought a Jeep Liberty Limited Edition with 155,000miles on it for $2000. I forget what year it is, but its the older body style. Anyways, are there any known problem areas with these? He got it real cheap because it has a bit of a knock in the bottom end. hes gonna yank the engine and rebuild it. you only hear the knock when the engine is under a load, and its real fast, making me wonder if its a piston pin issue. I would think a rod knock would be heard all the time.
Older body style = KJ, newer = KK
They're solid vehicles even though they're from the Daimler [censored] years. Daimler pretty much ignored the Jeep/Truck group though, and satisfied themselves with wrecking the car division and giving us junk like the 2.7L sludge monster. By way of contrast the engines that came out of the Jeep/Truck group in the Daimler years- the 4.7, 3.7, and the Hemis, are excellent.
I'm betting you're right that a higher RPM knock is probably wrist pins, but it could be a rod bearing getting loose. He's probably doing the right thing just rebuilding it. Solid little engine, just a 4.7 less 2 cylinders, and it is slightly odd-firing like the 3.9 before it. Not a rocket ship, but reliable if taken care of. Nothing can replace the old 4.0 straight six, but the 3.7 comes close. The only thing closer is the 60-degree 3.8 in the current Wrangler.
i haven't had any problems with mine! i had the ball joints done under the recall. other than oil and spark plug she has cost me nothing in maintenance. mike
I had a ball joint problem with my Ram 1500. One of the boots dry rotted and ruined the joint. Only happened to one of them, though. I only know one person with a Liberty (2003 I think) but it has never been in the shop for anything that cost the owner out of pocket. I would just keep running the engine until the problem gets worse or go to www.car-part.com for a junkyard engine.
Originally Posted By: cousincletus
I had a ball joint problem with my Ram 1500.
The first-gen Durango was also notorious for the upper ball joint problem. Since I never happened to own one of the affected trucks or Jeeps, I never actually found out if it was a supplier problem or a design problem. The fact that it affected several lines makes me think a bit of both maybe.
Been thinking about the engine sound some more. Piston slap is *so* common these days that I have to wonder if maybe that's what is going on. Another possibility is carbon build-up in the quench area of the combustion chambers so that at high RPM when the conrods stretch a few microns there's contact that makes the racket.
I had a ball joint problem with my Ram 1500.
The first-gen Durango was also notorious for the upper ball joint problem. Since I never happened to own one of the affected trucks or Jeeps, I never actually found out if it was a supplier problem or a design problem. The fact that it affected several lines makes me think a bit of both maybe.
Been thinking about the engine sound some more. Piston slap is *so* common these days that I have to wonder if maybe that's what is going on. Another possibility is carbon build-up in the quench area of the combustion chambers so that at high RPM when the conrods stretch a few microns there's contact that makes the racket.
No, I heard this noise myself, its definately a bottom end knock. Normally I would say its a rod bearing, but the engine runs whisper quiet until you get the rpms above 2,000 with a load on it. The knock is real loud and noticable then, and its real fast. Thats why I was thinking it might be a piston or wrist pin, since you only hear it under load. I had piston slap in my 05 TJ (4.0), so I know what that sounds like, and this is 10times louder than that was. Him and I are both diesel mechanics for a living, so neither one of us is real scared to tear into it. I was just curious if these things had any other issues and he was wondering if they had any bottom end issues in the engine to begin with that would have caused this problem.
Oh, also guys, is there after market speakers available for these things? It has the Infinity sound system, so it has the little amp's bolted to each speaker. The cones are seperating from the mounting brackets on the speakers in his front doors and they sound like [censored], amps are ok yet.
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