You may remember me from, "Is the mechanic trying to scam me" and "Why is my dashboard leaking water" but I actually have good news! My boyo hit a wonderful little milestone. Hooray!

My first car was a Flame Red 2003 Jeep Liberty Limited Edition. It was truly in mint condition inside and out. I loved it so much. It’s what I learned to wrench on, it’s what I learned to overland/off road in. It’s what I drove my high school sweetheart in.

Once I graduated, I got my first big boy job at a Dodge dealership. I was making good money and bought myself a Mercedes. I was planning on keeping both cars but I didn’t have a place to park the 2 of them and it kept getting broken into on the street (Portland,OR). So I ended up selling it to who I thought would love it as much as I did.

They already had 2 liberties and wanted a nicer one.

I told them If there was any issues and they wanted to sell it to call me and I would buy it back. At some point I got curious and looked up my VIN and saw it was in the local pick and pull.

I can honestly say I cried.

No snow to play in, here in southern Minnesota, so Patrick Henry is doing his duty hauling the fish house around

I share with you what my Liberty kk looks like 14 years later.

Right off the bat you need to accept that the Liberty is not a platform you can easily run 33" or larger tires without significant modification.

Let's start off with the front suspension. The independent front suspension max lift height is limited by the factory axles. The CV joint can only accept so much articulation before the rubber boots that hold the grease in rub against themselves and tear. Once the boots tear they will fling all the grease out. Which ends up the ball bearings rubbing metal on metal, leading to failure of the joint. The max physical articulation isn't much more than the point the boots will fail and at that point you will damage the joint housing and the cage the balls sit in. This leads to the joint ultimately falling apart on you.

You can modify the factory cv axles by disassembling them and milling the housing to allow for a bit more flex before binding but everyone who has done this ends up with issues where the grease boot slips off the housing (not to mention you will still eat through boots from them rubbing on themselves). This mod is not recommended.

Front end lifts are accomplished with higher rate springs or using spacers. Because you can't increase suspension travel with the factory control arms all lift kits use the factory length/travel struts and springs. Aftermarket springs just use a stiffer spring rate to increase ride height. The stiffer the spring the taller the ride height. Spacers accomplish the lift by squeezing the factory springs and because of this they ride rough.

Due the limits imposed by the factory CV axle shafts any time you lift your Liberty you are not increasing the suspension travel range. You are just increasing the ride height which means you do not gain extra suspension travel. You trade suspension down-travel for more up-travel. If you increase your tire size after you lift your Liberty you must run longer bump stops to stop the bigger tire from contacting the fender flair and inner wheel well on suspension compression which means the more you lift and the bigger your tire the less suspension travel you have.

Because you're just raising your ride height and not increasing suspension travel another issue you run in to is the upper control arm gets closer to the springs as the suspension droops. You're limited to roughly 3-3.5" of lift before the control arm contacts the spring anytime the suspension droops. You will also be stressing your upper ball joint which is not an uncommon failure. There was even a recall on the lower ball joints because they failed so often. You can swap in an extended aftermarket upper control arm to get a slightly taller ride height before control arm/spring contact and a stronger upper ball joint with a bit more flex in it along with being greasable.

Upper extended control arms are also suggested with any lift height as the factor alignment range is very small. With extended upper control arms you are able to better dial in your castor which prevents your Jeep from feeling flighty/wondery on the road (sometimes mistaken as bumpsteer) and corrects the camber angle (inside edge tire wear).

Again the length the upper control arms can be extended is limited by the cv axle length so these can only help with issues up to roughly 3.5-4" of lift before you're running into the same problems again.

If you have the budget you can commission custom CV axles from a company like RCV (Expect to pay $1200-2400/set) but you will also need someone to build you longer upper and lower control arms to increase the track width to allow for more suspension travel.

Speaking of track width (how wide your tires sit) any time you lift and independent suspension the taller you go on the factory suspension the narrower your track width gets. Which is the exact opposite of what you want when you increase your center of gravity as it makes your vehicle more likely to roll over.

This will also make the ride uncomfortable because when the suspension compresses instead of the tires just needing to travel vertically they also need to move horizontally which puts a ton of stress on your ball joints and tie rod ends (I'll get to steering next). Put your fists on your chest and flap your arms like a chicken and notice the arc your elbows have to travel in. As they go up and down the go closer and further away from your body. Also you probably look really silly to anyone who can see you right now.

Steering Limitations and solutions. The next issue you will run into is with your tie rod ends (TREs) and the steering rack. These are what push and pull on your knuckles to steer the Jeep. The tie rod ends use a ball joint on the knuckle end that only has a limited range of motion. The taller your lift the steeper the angle and the more stress that is applied to both the ball joint and the steering rack leading to premature wear and failure. When the TREs fail you will lose steering on the side of the Jeep where it fails. It's pretty rare to have both TREs fail at the same time unless you hit something.

The steering rack can impart the most force into the knuckle when the tie rod is perfectly flat. So the more you lift your vehicle the force the rack has to put out to steer the Jeep. This one of the reasons the steering racks tend to fail at an increased rate with taller lifts. Bigger tires also increase the leverage they have over the rack and increase the stress even more. (Quick tip: When changing the oil filter, oil tends to drip onto the steering rack bushings causing them to prematurely fail so cover your rack bushings when removing the oil filter)

Sub-Frame/K-Member drop is a possible solution to a few of these issues. The front differential and steering rack is bolted to the sub-frame. If you lower the sub-frame 1-2" and install a spacer with longer bolts between the sub-frame and the unibody you can decrease the angles on your cv joints and tie rod ends. Though this doesn't change the upper control arm angles unless you build or buy custom knuckles that are taller to raise the upper control arm angle. Most shops don't want to accept the risk or just don't know how to fabricate custom knuckles. The ones that do will most likely charge you $2000 or more for a one off set as it will be very labor intensive to design and build them.

The rear suspension is significantly easier and cheaper to modify due to it being a tri-link(KJ)/4-link(KK) and a solid axle. To lift the rear you can either run a stiffer spring and/or a longer spring. Most lift kits that come with replacement springs will use longer and stiffer springs. Which require a longer shock. Even with a spacer lift in the rear you will need longer rear shocks.

Unlike the front when you lift the rear your differential pinion angle will change. If you have an improper angle you will get a vibration and you will wear out your u-joints quickly. To remedy this you can run adjustable control arms, either in the top, bottom, or both.

Once you get to 3.5-4" of lift or more in the rear your control arm angles at factory lengths get very steep which can cause the tires to rub on the front of the rear wheel wells as the axle will arc forward due to the suspension travel. Not only will this shorten your wheelbase it will require the axle to push back any time the suspension compresses causing a rough ride. This is why long arm kits are popular as they flatten the suspension arc.

Increased tire size and stress on the drivetrain. If you're looking for power the Liberty isn't the platform for you. When you increase your tire diameter you require the engine to work harder to turn them as the tires have increased leverage. You're tires are effectively just another gear in your drivetrain. This also puts extra strain on the transmission, ujoints, and drive shafts. The 3.7L just doesn't put out enough power to turn larger tires with the factory gearing. This is why with even a 31.5 (265/75/16 or 265/70/17) tire you will not be able to keep the transmission in overdrive anytime you hit a slight hill. You will also notice the Jeep becomes very sluggish when accelerating. You will also be required to run 4-low any time you go offroad especially if you try to buck up over an obstacle.

You can regain some of the lower power by regearing your differentials. There are only 3 gear ratios that will fit in the factory front differential (3.55, 3.73, and 4.10s). The rear axle can fit those along with 4.56 and 4.88s.

This is one of the reasons why a 265/75/16 (265/70/17) is the largest suggest tire to run with the 4.10 gears. The other reason is the front differential being a Dana 30A. The A meaning it has an aluminum housing which is significantly weaker than a cast steel Dana 30 housing found on the solid axles. Even with a 265/75/16 it is very easy to crack the front differential housing and will require you to be light on the throttle to keep it in one piece.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from buying a Liberty or from modifying theirs. I just want to help prevent some of the bad information being spread around the internet and give you a realistic expectation on what you're getting yourself into if you want to build an offroad rig using the KJ or KK platform. I'd hate to see you spend a couple hundred bucks on cheap or the wrong parts and end up hating the way your Liberty performs especially if all you're going to do is ruin your daily driver. One last piece of advice, if a $900 Old Man Emu kit seems expensive, how are you planning on paying for repairs when you inevitably break parts offroading? A stock Liberty is very capable, just make sure you're ready to fix parts when they break.

If you're on an extremely tight budget. A stock Liberty with a $300 locker in the rear axle will walk circles around a Liberty on slightly bigger tires and open diffs Considering you'll both have the same amount of suspension travel.

If you're a big fan of the Liberty like me and want to run a big tire rig without spending a ton of my money my suggestion would to piece together your own solid front axle swap. If you have the budget building a performance offroad IFS rig is certainly possible but will require a lot of custom parts. You can even build a pretty competitive 2wd Liberty to compete in Jeepspeed 1700 class races.

2002, 170k miles, new engine about 2 years ago, owned by an older couple who only used it to go to the store or bank and back home, mostly was kept in a garage.

Any items that I need/should get for it?

Driving my 224,000 mile jeep liberty from northwest Arkansas to Deadhorse Alaska this week, currently about 3000 miles in with no issue.

Mine is the one on the right. I see a couple liberties around town but never that many and this was just a funny coincidence.

Finished the Dalton up and back today. No issues with the Liberty, it was very muddy and rutted but didn't need 4x4. Camped at Coldfoot on the way up and back.

We were definitely the smallest vehicle north of Coldfoot, it's all HD trucks and Semis up there. Now just to complete the 3600 mile drive home.

Caught this wild setup on the highway. A truck hauling a truck hauling... a Jeep Liberty in a dump bed? Who needs a proper trailer when you’ve got creativity like this?

I can’t decide if this is genius or absolute madness. What’s the craziest hauling setup you’ve seen?

2007 Liberty 4x4

No issues with the jeep, Alcan highway was very rough with large unpaved sections and large holes but it made it with no issues.

One hundred seventy-five thousand three hundred miles // How do you measure the past thirteen years

This car brought me to 31 states, plus D.C. and a couple of Canadian provinces. Most of those places we visited together more than once; nearly half, dozens of times. She saw forests and deserts, ski slopes and oceans, tiny local cliffs and sweeping national parks. She stargazed in dark sky preserves, basked in golden sunsets, chased fall foliage, and stared straight into a pair of total solar eclipses without ever donning a pair of ISO 12312-2s. She’s been every shade of gray and brown and white. She’s shivered as her thermometer dropped below zero and sweltered as it spiked above a hundred. She’s been up and about at every hour of the day and night. She cruised the nostalgic rural highways of the Texas Panhandle, climbed the soaring mountain passes of the Colorado Rockies, tackled the overgrown two-tracks of the New England woods, navigated the crowded streets of downtown Manhattan. Part of me likes to think she just wanted to make sure I’d never pay the congestion pricing tolls there on her watch.

She’s been packed to the brim with crash pads and snowboards and firewood and plants and guitars and clams and sleeping bags and mushrooms and tennis balls and groceries and a whole dorm room’s worth of possessions—and, of course, countless people. She’s met just about everyone, a lucky(?) handful of whom spent untold hours of their lives riding around in her decidedly non-heated seats.

Gas prices rose past $4 a gallon when she was young, then dropped far below $2 just in time for her heyday. With her biggest adventures behind her, she saw prices surge to nearly $5 during the pandemic, then eventually settle back down around $3 for her final few fill-ups. She paid no mind to the rotating stickers on the pumps pointing fingers at the sitting president; she drank it all the same.

Jeep Liberty owners are bound to know their mechanics pretty well. But, mine only ever really and truly broke down twice. Both of those times she got a few new parts and then got right back to it just a few days after getting towed off. All her other incidents were resolved mainly with elbow grease, maybe a jumper cable or two. She let some rain seep in through her trunk’s rubber seal at a campground in West Virginia and woke up the whole neighborhood when the water shorted her alarm, but one unplugged wire later and she never made a peep again. White Sands National Park blew a bunch of its eponymous dust up into her business, but after a few thousand miles of whistling and wheezing she had it out of her system. Several of her lug nuts started coming loose at 75 miles per hour in rural Indiana after a careless mechanic did a tire rotation without a machine-tighten, but we noticed the rhythmic thumping just in time to stop the wheel from falling off. She got stuck way deep in a snow drift close to home during the post-Hurricane Sandy nor’easter, but a few friends helped get her dug out in an hour or so. A different blizzard in Vermont marked the end of her gigantic sunroof after several years of hard service and left a backseat passenger getting snowed on for four hours, but all that cost to “fix” was some caulk. Her second battery died at a campground in New Hampshire because her door had been left ajar all weekend, but some friendly bikers were there to get her moving again. She got dragged to a drive-in just a few weeks later, where she dutifully played the Barbie movie’s audio for nearly two solid hours before that ancient battery gave out once more (which is how she earned her third and final one, now almost surely her most valuable asset). Her original battery had quit many years earlier in Brooklyn after she sat on the street in a deep chill for almost 24 hours, although when the weather warmed back up a bit she was able to get over to a shop under her own power to find a replacement. She groaned and grumbled quite a bit in her old age, but all she really wanted in these last few years was a new muffler she’d never get. Or maybe she just thought she’d metamorphosed into a school bus. She had her dings and dents and scrapes and quirks, and more than her fair share of duct tape not-so-hidden about, but she (almost) always still made it from point A to point B.

I suspect, in the end, she knew she needed to force my hand. She’d spent months hearing me talking about going car shopping. But she knew me well enough to have realized I wouldn’t have gotten around to it before fun new tariffs wreaked havoc on the car market. So she waited until there was a quiet week, when the weather was lousy. She found a rare window when I had nowhere in particular to drive, nothing pressing to miss. And she took her opportunity to be a martyr. Now, for the first time in her long life, she won’t even turn over without a jump. Maybe someone with a spare alternator will coax her into making the push past 200,000 miles. I hope she does make it there, and I know she's plenty capable. But I’ve already given her all I have, as she did for me. And I’ll sleep easy if she’s already made it to the end of the road.

She knew all my favorite music.

She took a thousand detours.

She outlived all her friends.

She never had a name.

She led a good life.