On 19 Dec 2003 02:13 PM, TooPlaneCrazy7 posted the following:
The selectrac mode is of little use off road. The only benefit of the selectrac unit is the full time 4wd mode may be left engaged on the road under all conditions without damaging the drivetrain (which might result if part time mode were used in this manner) since it has a differential coupling built in between the front and rear drive outputs. A google search on command-trac vs. selec-trac should give you more information on this topic that you will know what to do with.
I sat in one and found it to be more comfortable than the XJ Cherokees I have been in, due to the increased headroom. Mechanically speaking I would rather have the XJ due to the solid front axle and 4.0 motor.
Depends on what you want to do with it. For a grocery getter used on nasty roads, it will probably do as well as any other CUV (cute utility vehicle). If you try to use it off road much, you will most likely find it lacking.
Depends on what the meaning of the word casual is (I did not have casual relations with that Jeep!). If you want to go anywhere that clearance is an issue, you will find lifting the IFS to install larger tires to be expensive and a hassle. If suspension articulation is desired, look elsewhere. ANY other Jeep currently available is better than the liberty in these regards, at least until the '05 models come out....
---------------------------------------------------- Del Rawlins- del@_kills_spammers_rawlinsbrothers.org Remove _kills_spammers_ to reply via email. Unofficial Bearhawk FAQ website:
Personally, for the money that you have mentioned, I'd get (and I have) a used late model Grand Cherokee, fully loaded from Carmax. They offer very good warranty's (better than OEM in most cases).
I got my girlfriend a 2000 Grand Limited (28K miles, V8, all the toys) with a 4 year warranty for $22K out the door.
You will hear a lot of whack out people who have had thier brains turned to a loofa from sniffing too much unburnt exhause fumes claiming that only 'real' jeeps were made during the 50's and have to have chevy motors transplanted into them. I have to tell you the
*Really REAL* Jeeps were made during the '40s. That bunch of trolling out of the way know this: In Texas you have 4 inch an hour frog strangling tropical down pours.
How many times a year have you been driving down the road at 70 mph and then boom, thirty seconds later you cannot see the end of the hood. It happens to me at least twice a year. You get caught in these several times each year too. This is why you want the Selectrac
*AND* the ABS. You will hear from some very vocal ethnocentric people in this group that the only place anyone ever drives anything 4 wheel is on dry rocks in the desert, which you and I (I am in Houston) never get near. You will just be so much better served by a Liberty than a CJ3B with a 6 inch lift, 38 super swampers and a small block chevy transplant that it is not funny.
Do a google on my name in this news group and it should turn up a bunch of my evangelical rantings about how good a Liberty is and what it can and can't do.
My most recent adventure was the weekend before turky day. I was given an old DEC pdp computer which was in a double wide relay rack,
6ft wide, 8ft tall, weight pushing a ton. I put this on Mom's low-boy trailer, chinched a come-a-long across the top to keep it from falling over and lit out across Houston for the house pulling it with the 99 TJ. The TJ has the nice 6 and is a little bit peppy. However it is short wheel base, and the old computer is acting like a big sail and the rig is squirreling all over the road. I dared not get on the freeway with it, which meant driving down Washington and up Shephard in the middle of the night (at least I was in good company with all the other mentally deficients out in that part of the world that time of a saturday night). The next day when Wife got back from girl scout camp with the Liberty I used the Liberty to haul the trailor up to the farm, about a hundred miles. No problems. Moral of story: you can put a dead TJ on a trailer and haul it with a Liberty, you cannot haul a Liberty with a TJ.
This is a pretty good option to consider also, especially with regard to being caught in a sudden storm.
I guess the theory is that the Liberty is good enough for what 95% of the truck buying market would want to do with it, and the other 5% would want a modded Wrangler instead. Whether is is good enough for you depends on if you can live with the limited space compared to a Grand or a Cherokee, and how nuts you want to go offroad.
Besides the space issue, the thing I don't like about it is the fact that it looks cheaply built to me- don't know if this is true of the whole vehicle or just the cosmetics. But then again most vehicles are like that nowdays.
snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (TooPlaneCrazy7) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m13.aol.com:
Do you ever get ice storms? Do you ever travel to places where they do? If so, that full time 4X4 could come in handy for roads with patchy ice. but if you're down in the valley where mud and sand are your only obstacles, then you probably don't.
I absolutely love mine. I bought it to replace a Ford Explorer, and find that like the Explorer, its a great comfortable ride for someone who only occasionally needs 4x4 or high clearance. I think many of the negative comments you see here are from people who judge vehicles purely by their ability to navigate extreme off road terrain.
I'm in New England - snow and ice all the damn time. Liberty's been a tough little commuter & so far part time 4X4 is just fine for most storms. Works well for hour long suburban commute (range of 20-60 mph). I put one bag of 70lb tube sand over rear axle to make the ride a little more solid in winter. Milage challenged but of small SUVs this one's a little heavier so it's worth it for me. Poor internal storage places.
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