Need Help, Liberty CRD vs WJ?

[nc wagoneer]

Long story short my moms 2003 Kia Sorento caught on fire over Christmas due to wires in the wiring harness breaking down. The quest has begun for a new suv and after a few weeks I've found a couple good options. The first is a 2004 WJ Columbia Edition with the 4.0. It has 77k miles on it and is in great condition with 2 previous owners, they are asking 11k for this jeep. The second is a 2006 Liberty Limited CRD with 144k miles, they are asking $8500, but it was bought new at the local jeep dealership and has all of the recall work done as well as full maintenance records for the jeep, it has only had 1 meticulous owner. I'm a diesel guy, and would like the crd and would plan on doing the egr mod as well as the other reliability mods if we bought it, I just want some opinions from other jeep owners. I will be doing all of the maintenance myself, so ease of maintenance is a big plus for me. My moms normal daily commute is about 20-30 miles round trip, but working at a restaurant, she has to be there come hell or high water and we have a really bad dirt and gravel driveway that she needs to traverse in the snow as well. Any opinions will be appreciated.
Thanks,
ncwag

[nc wagoneer]

Anybody have experience with the crd? It seems like most of the problems can be cured by deleting the egr, but I would like some more personal experience. I figure that the wj with the 4.0 would just run forever, but at the cost of fuel mileage.

[ghcoe]

If it were me I go CRD. Don't know too much about them fist hand but have talked to a few diesel people and they seemed to like them just fine. They power a lot of non US vehicles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_Motori

[jamesdart]

Do your homework on the crd. I had one for a very short while, after having such good luck with my 3.7 liberty. I bought it for very cheap needing some repairs, same as my 3.7. I had to be quick about it. Snatched it up, did a lot of research, and sold it before I put a dime into it, happy to break even. I realized I had such good luck with the gasser with very little investment, or repairs. That crd was a real brainfart from mopar. I can go into detail if you would like.

[Stuka]

The CRDs have several known reliability issues. They can be reliable, but they can also leave you with a $5k bill as many have had happen.

Our 3.7L Liberty was flawless, I looked hard at CRDs first, but decided I wanted reliability over economy. Ours was a Limited wich had an NV242 t-case which rocked for my wife. Didnt have to tell her to shift it in and out of 4wd on drive pavement when it was icy.

WJs are good Jeeps, and can be had for cheap these days. The 4.0 ones are a bit under powered, and the later 4.0s had a few issues (cracking exhaust manifolds and cracked heads for some years).

[jamesdart]

Screw it, I will.
For starters, try to find a good crd engine. When I had that one, a used running engine was going for 4-6,000 depending on mileage. Look on car-part.com, there is no shortage of blown up ones.
There was a recall when they were new, SMS kind of tranny problems. They retuned them and took power out to help the trans live. Instead of pulling the trans and adressing the issue. I think it was the converter. If you didn't have the recall done you voided the warranty.
There is some problem with the the emissions system, it pretty much helps them self destruct. People delete the stuff and have good results, but they also need a "tune". If they their whole life with the factory setup they are pretty much a time bomb.The boost hoses go bad and if you don't catch it in time can have plenty of other problems. The turbos don't last all that long. The fuel filter setup is problematic and can have problems with air getting into the system. Timing belt has a 60,000 mile life. Anything more than that is a gamble. When it lets loose it takes out the valvetrain, I can also skip and take out the valvetrain. To do the water pump the whole timing belt setup needs to come apart. The torque converters are problematic.
All parts are expensive and hard to find. You will not find much for it in stock at any local auto parts store or dealer. At the time I had mine you either had to get parts from vendors in Europe that are willing to ship, or the stealer. At that time you couldn't even buy a fresh short lock or long block. Never mind parts to do a whole rebuild.
Boost hoses were around 300$
Tune 500$
Trans tune 500$
Torque converter 800$
Fuel filter 80$ and needs replacement every 3 months or so
I bought my gasser for 1500$ at 7 years old, it needed very little to get going. I put 60,000 miles on it, and wheeled it with no issues. I would have been a fool to mess with that thing. Also the mpg is really not that much better. Especially for the fuel being more expensive.
Some of my facts might be a little fuzzy, that whole waste of time was a few years ago.

[Greenmachine]

If you want to learn about a liberty crd, lost jeep forums are a great resource. I have 194k on one and still going strong, daily drive 85 miles. I did a fuel filter change a week ago and it was about $30 for a napa gold (less than a duramax, powerstroke, or cummins). The 2.8 is used in multiple platforms overseas and it a well thought of engine. Much of its issues in the US is no one knew how to work on them and soccer moms treating them like gas burners. Parts are more expensive than gas burner parts but so are parts for every other diesel on the market. A full waterpump timing belt kit with tensioners is $399 which is inline with alot of small import gas burners. My timing belt was replaced at 100k and it will get replaced at 200k...

[jamesdart]

"Lost jeeps" is where I read enough to realize I should just break even and stick with my gasser. It seems like although it is a commonly used engine overseas, they don't have all the pollution controls on them there which cause most of the problems. You should definitely look on the forums specific to that vehicle.
Mine had 165,000 miles. I bought it from original owner, he had a huge folder of regular maintenance done to it. It had the timing belt done, but around 150,000 it blew up. He liked it so much he spent 6,500 having a 25,000 mile junkyard engine installed, that started knocking within 10-15,000 miles. It had a warranty but the claim got dragged out long enough to void the warranty. And he decided it was time to move on. I bought it. It threw a rod moving it around my driveway.

[nc wagoneer]

Well, the wj came home with us last night. Going to get a new oil cap today as it is seeping a bit around it which seems to be the seal. It's like driving a new car that is 10 years old. It seems to be lacking in power, and from what I've read there isn't a real efficient way to get power out of the newer 4.0's, is there anything to do to get a little more passing power?

[Stuka]

An exhaust will help. High flow cat and muffler actually make a noticeable difference, although it will be louder.

There are tunes out there, but I am not sure they are worth their cost. Some of them do provide a boost that is noticeable in some cases. The main difference is the ones that change the shift points, assuming there is one for WJs. There are for other vehicles.

[Pablo]

Glad you steered clear of the CRD. Bought one new, and I was used to MB diesels so I stayed on top of the normal diesel maintenance. The CRD is a good engine for an enthusiastic mechanic who likes to stay on top of everything.

For someone who wants to enjoy their vehicle without worrying about it stranding them on the side of the road and having to wait for Fed-Ex to deliver parts since they are never in stock... not a good choice.

I can second all that was said about its issues before, and can add to that:

It has gasser fuel lines that were designed to push fuel from the tank hooked up to a diesel injection pump that pulls from the engine-- resulting in leaking air past the seals into the fuel line causing the engine to stall frequently, and probably leading to early death of the CP3 injection pump. Had to put a lift pump in it to keep it running.

Stock fuel heater known to overheat to the point of melting its wiring. Replaced with better design but not recalled so you get to replace it on your dime or risk an engine fire.

Stock glow plugs that are known to break and drop into the piston taking out the engine. Redesigned but again you get to pay for them... Not recalled.

An engine low pressure sensor located by the pan in the most retarded position... so that by the time it triggers the low pressure light the engine is already a boat anchor.

A turbo oil hose breaking will cause oil starvation to the top half of the motor instantly as it is on a more direct route than the oil galleys to the motor. See problem above for end result..

An air cleaner designed for a naturally aspirated gasser that is insufficient in air delivery to the motor. Fittings on the airbox are so bad from the factory I could see daylight between the fittings leading from the air filter box to the turbo inlet.

A hacked ecm that thinks it is the bus master on the can bus.. But the transmission also thinks it is bus master, so they are time sliced in software. The result when you plug in an odb2 reader for more than 15 seconds is the computer freezing up and rebooting: dropping you from 5th to 3rd gear while going down the highway. Sometimes the ecu updates from the dealer hose the odb connection entirely... violating federal epa laws.

Fun times trying to lift it as the diff is offset on crds... resulting in a cv joint that is extremely short on the driver side.

Then there is the pos torque converter... The expensive alternator, the proprietary super expensive power steering setup, the extra water pump/engine heater that likes to take a dump on you and leak coolant and kill your fuel mileage , the accounts of new delivered engines with casting sand in the engine coolant...

I could go on for days...

But the power and economy were great...